Rift
by silvertonedwords
Summary: "What's the date, Snow?" "Um, June…fourth? Fifth? Fifth, I think." "Of…" "June." "Snow." She falters at the other end of the line. "Twenty…twenty one?..." A rift in the center of town, an unusual passage of time, broken relationships, and a trip to the Underworld. OQ centric and AU from 3x22 onwards. Sequel to In the Darkness.
1. Chapter 1: Rift

Sequel to In the Darkness, and using that as the background for this plot. (So, essentially, AU from 3x22 onwards.) If you haven't read that or (reasonably) don't remember it, don't worry about it. Basically think of this as an AU where Marian was Marian, they got past it, (Marian's not dead), and now they're together. They are happening to go to the Underworld, but nothing much else from the show will be used post 3x22.

I've had notes for this hanging around my computer for over a year, and I think I'm just too attached to the idea not to write it. So…if people actually want to read it, I'll write it. A thousand thanks to Nina for agonizing over details of the premise with me until I felt like it worked. Your insights are truly invaluable.

Chapter One

* * *

 ** _Storybrooke, June 2021_**

Regina groans as she turns over in bed. Her head feels like it's taken a beating. Her temples throb and her eyes ache in the stark white light of the overcast day.

She blinks heavily to clear away some of her grogginess, and reaches a hand over to Robin's side of the bed.

It's cold.

She turns to look. There are no creases in the sheets, no indents in the pillows. She realizes with a slightly anxious jolt that it's not been slept in.

"Robin?" she says, looking around the room, suddenly alert. Something seems off; something she can't put her finger on, like someone's come in the night and rearranged items on her vanity, or shifted the furniture to different positions.

The whole room itself has a decidedly different air to it, an emptiness in its blank surfaces and pristine cleanliness that brings to mind the time of Henry's early childhood and life under the curse.

She looks again, trying to recall details, her right hand unconsciously raised and gathering magic should it become necessary in this suddenly less familiar place.

Robin's clothes are not on the lounge chair, nor are his glasses on the bedside table. The vanity mirror hangs to the left of where it used to and has a new frame. She doesn't recognize the grey blanket folded and draped across the foot of the bed, and the cream rug faces the wrong way.

She searches for a phone on the bedside table, lifts the sheets to check for one there, scours the floor beside her, but finds nothing. The only personal item sitting out in the room seems to be a standing frame containing two photographs. One is very familiar: Henry, age ten, wearing his grey and orange scarf and smiling at the camera. But the one beside it—her heart begins to pound, a flush of adrenaline rushing through her tense neck and shoulders. It's Henry, all right—his light brown hair and brown eyes and toothy smile, but he's older—a teenager, almost fully grown and so much taller than in the familiar photo of the little boy. And there's someone else in the photograph with him: a boy of about ten, with long limbs and wildly curly dark hair and dimples and—is that Roland? But it can't be. He's barely six; she'd made the birthday cake herself.

Oh, whoever did this is going to regret it—Her memory must have been wiped clean again—a curse, or—

Mother was there, she suddenly recalls. Wherever she last was. The echo of that voice tenses each muscle in her body, and she has to force her jaw open when she realizes she's nearly drawn blood biting her lip. She tries to remember who else—Robin, she thinks. And Snow, Emma, Charming—the Underworld, wasn't it? They were trying to protect the town from the curse of Pandora's box. Had they succeeded? She feels lighter, like the weight of all of the curse's dark emotions might have lifted. Her mind feels less clouded with those impulses of anger and fear and hopelessness and depression. But—Henry was years younger, Roland barely school-aged, and—

Where are they.

"Henry!" she cries, throwing off the blankets and tugging on the grey silk dressing gown at her vanity. She checks her vanity for a phone, but sees only a statuesque black lamp and the gold earrings she or— _someone_ —must have worn yesterday. "Robin! Roland! Henry?"

She makes her way into the hall and toward Henry's room, hastily tying her gown over her pajamas.

Henry's room is still his, at least, unlike when they came back from the Enchanted Forest after the second curse. Blue, and full of books and pictures, including the one that was on her dresser. But older, too, with pairs of shoes too large to fit him, and jackets too long for his arms. She has never seen the NYU banner hangs above the bed before.

Regina turns, perplexed, to check Roland's room, when she meets the boy himself in the hall.

She was right before. It was him. He's much taller—only a few inches shy of her shoulders, with stronger, older features, and even more curly, unruly hair. He's lost the baby fat around his jaw and cheeks, and his limbs are more proportional and less lanky than she remembers. He's rubbing his eyes tiredly as he looks at her. "Is something wrong, R'gina?" he yawns, "I thought Henry's at school, and Papa isn't coming to get me 'til tonight, when they get back from the forest."

Regina blinks. "School?" she murmurs.

Roland nods, looking at her like she's gone a bit mad.

"In New York."

And—"Coming to get you?"

"Like he always does," Roland says with an air of indulgence for a silly question, so like his father that Regina can't help the way her lips twitch into a momentary grin. "Are you sure you're all right?" he repeats.

"What?" She looks around, her words distracted and almost automatic as she struggles to direct her feet in any one direction, to decide who she should call first. Robin's phone never works where they camp in the forest, so that'll be of no use. "Oh. Fine, sweetheart. I'm fine."

"You don't look fine," he insists.

"Let's go downstairs," she requests, "I have some calls I have to make."

 ** _Storybrooke, January 2018_**

"Who found this?" Regina extends one hand over the orange-red crack in the ground.

"I did." Little John steps forward, nodding at two or three Merry Men gathered around him. "We were out this way, last night, and everything looked normal. But when we walked by this morning, it was just…here."

Regina bends closer to inspect the ground. A rift about two feet wide has opened in the dirt, and the gap between oozes with a red-hot substance that reminds Regina of picture's she's seen of active volcanoes. Its heat warms the general area, making the space an odd temperature for Storybrooke winter. With her hand this close, it swelters.

"And you're sure this wasn't here yesterday? You're sure it's the same spot?"

Little John looks peevish. "I believe we know our forest."

Regina does not dignify him with a response, but she does lift her eyes to glare.

"Do you think it's safe to cross?" Charming asks.

"Only one way to find out," Emma replies, stepping forward.

"Emma, no, wait," Snow cautions her daughter.

Regina sighs heavily. "Be careful, would you?"

Emma stretches one arm over the gap, and when nothing changes, jumps over it. "Seems fine," she observes from the other side, before jumping back to join them.

Flames flicker and then grow from the oozing-warm substance, leaving a wave of heat in their wake. "You sure about that?" John inquires. They all step back.

A searing-hot metal box flies from the gap, crossing several yards in seconds. Nobody sees it until it slams into the dirt and falls open with a metallic clunk.

Regina gasps in pain, and looks to her throbbing arm to see a red streak across her skin, and the singed edges of her coat and blouse around it. It had burned her.

Her pained breath goes unnoticed in the clamor that follows.

Distressed cries fill the air. Screams, whimpers of pain, voices begging for help. The sky goes dark.

A wave of nausea floods through Regina, and after it a rush of rage so strong it takes her breath away, then fear that makes her hands shake and her jaw tighten, hopelessness that leaves her struggling to stand, weakness that makes her eyelids droop, a deep sadness that pulls at suddenly tired muscles. When she can see again, her face feels hot and flushed and there are tears in her eyes. As she becomes aware again of Robin and his men, Henry, Snow, Emma, Hook, Charming, Belle, standing around her, she sees a similar reaction in all of them as well.

She tries to catch her breath and steel herself against it, bewildered for a moment by the force of it, the way dark magic races through her veins like strikes of lightning, angry and fierce and of a time in her life that's never far away, no matter what those standing around her may think. In the momentary stillness after, she catches Robin's eyes, and though their exterior is calm, she sees in them that he saw it, too.

"What was _that_?" Henry asks, looking around.

The flames have died down and left only the oozing red-orange in their place, but the gap is now several feet wider than it was before, and far too wide to jump.

Snow takes in everyone's still unsettled features. "Did everyone else feel—?"

"Horrible?" Emma supplies.

Everyone nods in agreement.

"Is everyone all right?" Her hand is white where it grips David's. Snow turns her questioning gaze to Regina. "Regina, your arm!"

All eyes turn to her, and it is only then that the stinging, throbbing sensation returns to her right arm, just below her shoulder.

She recalls that an object had struck her, and searches the ground to find an iron box with intricate detail work. It has fallen shut and lies behind her.

Emma comes over and holds up a palm, growing frustrated as wave after wave of magic does nothing to change the wound.

"Emma, Emma, stop," Regina orders, looking down at the angry red flesh. "It's a magical wound. There's no point. It's likely not possible to heal it this way. Let's focus on figuring out what's going on here."

Regina turns her gaze to the Merry Men. "So, again, you didn't see anyone or anything to explain this?" She flinches as Robin smoothes her hair over her shoulder and tugs the damaged fabric of her coat and blouse out of the way.

"Robin."

"It needs bandaging," he insists.

She sighs but doesn't resist.

"No, nothing," Friar Tuck confirms. "It was just, _there_."

Odds and ends rustle in Robin's sack.

Charming looks into the distance in one direction, then the other. "And you don't know where it stops?"

"No."

Regina grimaces as Robin smoothes some kind of salve over her burn, the lets out a breath when its numbing and cooling qualities take effect. "I'm going to need that arm for magic," she reminds him when he takes out a spool of bandages.

Snow looks between them, and then at her husband and Hook. "We'll track the rift as far as it goes. Maybe we can find something at the end, and at the very least we'll know how widespread it is."

"You take one direction," Robin pauses in wrapping gauze around her wound to nod at John and Alan and Tuck, "we'll take the other." He secures the bandage into place. "Okay?" he murmurs, his hand sliding down her arm to squeeze her hand.

"Fine."

Henry looks up hopefully, but Emma and Regina shake their heads in unison, as Emma bends down and cautiously picks up the box.

"Why don't you and Belle see what the two of you can dig up in the library?" Regina suggest to Henry.

" _Mom_ ," he whines, looking at Regina first, then Emma, "Really?"

"Henry."

He sighs heavily, but walks over to join Belle.

"Should we open it?" Emma suggests.

Regina shakes her head, swallowing a hiss of pain as she moves her arm too quickly and it throbs. Robin looks at her sharply. "I don't think we should be opening it before we know what it is. Or have you forgotten how playing with unknown magical objects typically goes in Henry's book?"

"Fair point."

Regina gestures at the box. "Let's see what we can figure out in the vault."

"Right," Emma turns it over one last time and hands it over, clearly having found nothing enlightening on its surfaces, "fine."

.

.

.

Regina sets the box in the back seat of her car, then slides into the driver's seat with a sigh. "So you didn't see anything else."

"No it just…stops after a couple of miles. You and Emma didn't think of anything?"

"Nothing."

"And has Henry called?"

"Yes. No luck at the library either."

Robin frowns as he sits beside her. "I wish we could leave that in the vault. I wouldn't relish feeling like that again."

She glances in the rearview mirror. "I'll put it in the basement, but I want to keep working on it tonight, after we get the boys."

"I can walk to get Roland from Marian's in a couple of hours, and I'm sure Henry can find his way home." He gestures toward the bandage wrapped around her upper arm. "Driving cannot be comfortable."

She catches his gaze briefly as she pulls onto the road. "I'm fine. And it'll be freezing tonight."

"We did live in the forest for a long time, M'lady, before you upgraded us to a mansion and silk sheets and running water in heated tanks."

"And yet, Robin Hood, man of the forest, just used the word 'upgrade' correctly in a sentence."

He chuckles. "I am a man of many talents, M'lady. Although, perhaps you should finally teach me to drive. That's one talent that would actually be quite useful."

He presses his lips together thoughtfully as he sees that his teasing seems to have succeeded only in darkening her mood.

"What is it, Regina?"

She's still shaken, he thinks, from the rush of negative feelings, from the anger and sadness and hopelessness that must have flooded into her chest as it did all of them, and from the impulse those things draw on in her, the muscle memory of feeling them, and burying them, and lashing out.

"Nothing."

But she knows as readily as he that he doesn't buy it.

He watches her hands, tight on the wheel, and reaches for her, brushing his fingers against the back of one hand.

She relents, sounding bitter, "If only there were ever time for that." The tall trees beside the road throw her face into light, then shadow. "There's always some imminent threat trying to destroy us," her voice is stern and calm right up to when it cracks over the edges of words. "Something we have to deal with. We can't ever just… _be_ …."

"These past few months have been lovely."

Her voice cracks in a way that would be indistinguishable to most. "Yes."

"Without all of that…noise."

"Yes."

He strokes her wrist as she allows one hand to fall from the wheel and join with his. "We're going to figure it out, soon," he promises.

"Perhaps, but then there'll be the next thing, and the next…"

She's not wrong about that, not really, and so he does not object, but he grasps her hand more tightly.

He can feel her magic, and has ever since those three days this past winter when she'd been frozen and he'd thought her dead. It sits at the tips of her fingers, buzzing like electricity, like the searing poison once used to try to end her life before they'd even met. His eyes search out of habit for the raised, whitish scars that lie along her hairline at both temples, and he fights the urge he so often feels to trace them with his fingers, to try to soothe them. Some of her scars run too deep, he knows, for a simple word or touch to heal.

He leans back against his seat, hoping that his presence does what his voice may not.

.

.

.

 _"It still isn't working," the woman says coldly to no one in particular. She is all the more terrifying for her calculating tone, her eerie lack of visible anger. She turns from her reflection in the dark and murky water, sweeping her blood red skirts after her. "Why?" she demands, this time of the two servants staring blankly at her._

 _"It violates the way of things," one speaks quietly. "We are meant to stay here, in the Underworld, and they are meant to remain above."_

 _"That's why I used the spell, you imbecile," she bites out, calm and collected and threatening, "to trade places."_

 _They stare at her blankly, all of them._

 _"I have no time for this." She turns, throwing magic at them so that they stumble back. "Leave me. Now!"_

.

.

.

 **A few days later**

Regina looks at Robin over her shoulder as he deposits a grey wool peacoat on her shoulders, his footsteps loud in the crisp snow.

"You brought me a coat, but you're not wearing one?"

"I'm wearing a sweater," he replies, teasingly defensive, as he comes to stand beside her on the back patio, "and for that matter, my arms are completely covered, unlike yours."

"It feels good on the burn."

Steam wafts up from the mugs of tea that he's brought as he shifts one from his hand to hers. Her skin is freezing to the touch after the quarter of an hour that she's spent in the brisk winter air. "But not on the rest of you, surely?"

He takes a sip of his tea and rubs his free hand up and down his arm. "You know, I could use some of that ominous magical fire right about now," he observes. "It's bloody freezing out here."

Her answering gaze gives him pause, despite what are clearly her best efforts to be teasingly stern.

"You're not worried about dealing with that, are you?"

She shakes her head, almost too quickly. "No, of course not."

"Then what?"

She sighs, taking a sip of tea and then resting the mug on a chair's arm beside her. She tugs the coat more firmly around her shoulders, gingerly avoiding the bandage still wrapped around her arm.

She does not continue for several long moments, but he knows her well enough to wait.

"It's not that, exactly, but…what if," she turns to look at him, and the pain gathering beneath the surface of her eyes cuts to his core, "what if it never stops?" Her voice cracks, just barely, on the last word. "What if things just get worse and worse until…"

"We were together today, Regina. We woke up in the same bed. We had dinner with the boys. It wasn't all bad."

"For now," she whispers, and he recognizes the fear in the changing cadence of her voice and disrupted rhythm of her breathing. "What if these things are…the world, trying to remind me that I wasn't meant for—and I'm not listening."

He deposits his tea on a small patch of patio table not covered with snow, and crosses the few feet of space between them, joining his warm hand with her cold one. "I refuse to believe that. And you don't really believe that either."

She lets out a broken laugh. "Maybe I should."

"Regina, love," he sighs. He draws her into an embrace, shivering as her cool hands and arms and face press into his body. He tugs her even closer.

He would remind her that they had all experienced the dispiriting effects of whatever that had been in the woods, but he knows better. For after the life she's lived, he thinks bitterly, she has a right to these feelings, and to argue that she is wrong, that they are merely the effect of magic, is to dismiss what she has lived through.

"I don't think I can say anything to make you worry less," he tells her, dropping a kiss in her hair, "and I don't know about the whole world, but I, for one, want you to have as many good days as possible."

He can't see her face with it pressed into his shoulder, but he feels her features shift, and hears her take a few deep breaths.

When she moves to pull away a moment later, he lets her go. Robin shivers at the loss of her body heat. "Gods, it's cold out here." He holds out a hand. "Come inside with me?"

A deep sadness flickers in her dark and slightly damp eyes, and in the way she holds her arms around herself. "In a minute," she replies.

He sighs and half-smiles at her, disappointed but not surprised. "All right. I'll be there when you're ready to come back in." His lips land briefly on her temple, and then he retrieves his tea and turns back to the house.

.

.

.

"They're both sound asleep," Regina says softly as she enters their room.

He looks up from his book, pulling off his glasses so that he can see her. "Good."

Tears leak out of her eyes, just visible in the moonlight.

"Regina," he breathes.

Her answering smile is tender, but unconvincing. Their eye contact, however, goes deeper, revealing a warmth, a closeness that sits beneath her armor.

"Come here," he offers, holding out his hand.

When she reaches the side of the bed, he grasps her hand and tugs her to sit with him, shifting until he is beside her. Although she's clearly changed into pajamas and readied herself for bed, she must have come inside very recently, because her skin is cold to the touch.

He tangles fingers into the ends of her hair, sweeping it behind her shoulder, smiling at the light fragrance of the creams she rubs into her hands and face each night.

She turns ever so slightly away from his gaze.

He used to think it odd, how close and yet closed off she could be. They'd had a long series of moments, back in the Enchanted Forest, when she'd stopped them at the brink of _something_ , because they'd both known, always, no matter the times they'd tried to forget or evade the fact, that once they were open to each other in earnest, the connection between them would be irrevocable.

She'd put barriers between them out of fear just when they had grown closer, and he'd always thought it was because she knew that physical closeness would open the floodgates, would allow him entrance into a heart that was too broken to be vulnerable again, and too resilient not to open to him anyway.

But it seems that no matter how long they are together, no matter how certain he is of her trust in him, it is nearly impossible for her to trust in herself.

He would not, could not wish that Marian had not came back, is thankful every day that she's alive and well, but in moments like this he wishes with all of his soul that it had happened another—any other—way. Because he fears that Regina's faith in herself, broken cruelly just when it had been so beautifully reborn, will never be the same as it was in those heady few hours between their rescue of baby Neal, and the party at Granny's when it fell apart.

He searches for words, but settles on none that satisfy. "I know that you know this," he hums, pressing a kiss behind her ear, "but I love you."

Though she is still tense, she leans into him, and searches out his lips herself. Her fingers tangle in his cotton shirt, and her kisses are insistent for several moments until she pulls away with a sigh that speaks as much of stress as of released tension.

"We have to be awake soon," she says softly, skating one finger over his stubble and onto his lips, and moving to lift the covers and rest against her pillows. "We should get some sleep."

Still, when she settles on her side, she reaches behind her and tugs his arm until he's nestled just behind her.

"Goodnight, love," he murmurs, dropping a kiss in her hair.

"Goodnight," she returns. Her grip on the hand that covers her waist still feels tense to him, but he decides to let it go for now, and drifts towards sleep. They'll talk again tomorrow.


	2. Chapter 2: Pandora's Box

**Storybrooke, January 2018, a few days later**

"Mom! Mom, we've figured it out." Henry rushes into the diner with a large leather-bound book under one arm, Belle following at his heels.

Regina turns to face the door, and Robin looks up from his coffee, following her gaze.

When Henry reaches them, he slides their coffee cups out of his way, depositing the book in the empty space and opening it to a page he's marked with his hand. "Look," he points at the top of the second page, where a calligraphy P denotes the beginning of a new section. Above it, in precisely drawn lines, is an image of the box they'd found.

"Pandora's Box," Regina reads. She places a finger on the page and skims down its paragraphs quickly.

Emma stands from her seat at the bar, leaving her coffee behind. "What's up?"

Henry glances back at her, then at Snow and Charming, who have also stood and gathered around the booth. "What's going on?"

Regina sighs and pushes the book back to Henry, lifting the box itself from beside her and setting it on the table. "Why don't you read it for everyone? The relevant parts anyway."

Henry casts a glance around the room at the growing number of people listening in, then takes a deep breath and begins.

"Once upon a time, there was little evil in the world. Sadness, sickness, and misery were barely known. It was in this time that the gods grew very fond of a woman named Pandora. They decided that they would give her a gift. A beautiful box fashioned of iron and covered with intricate carvings. However, before they could give her the gift, an argument began among them.

Some of them believed that ordinary humans did not deserve such a treasure, as fickle and easily distracted as they were. Others thought that Pandora could be trusted with it. In order to settle their debate, they crafted a clever plan. Each of the gods would place his or her own curse inside the box, transforming it into a dangerous test.

 _Pandora,_ they warned her as they gave it to her, _however curious you may be, however much you may wish to, you must never open this box. You must trust our judgment and promise to obey_."

"Some gift," Leroy scoffs.

Regina glares, and he rolls his eyes.

Henry clears his throat and continues, unfazed.

"Naturally, Pandora was curious, but for many months, she did exactly what they had asked. Eventually, Pandora found that she could no longer contain her curiosity. What could the gods have placed inside this box, she wondered, and why should she not open it? It had been given to her, after all, and should not anything inside it be hers as well? Pandora found the iron key that belonged to the box, placed it in its lock, and opened the lid."

The facing page is embellished with a drawing of Pandora, a young woman, bent over the same box with her fingers on the latch.

"Pandora heard a distant scream, and clouds of black filled the air as the box's contents spilled into the world. Greed, jealousy, anger, hatred, famine, illness. On that day, it is fabled, humankind gained all manner of evils."

Regina shoots a glare at Leroy before he can interject with complaints about the story's improbability.

"Pandora cried out and tried to slam the lid shut, but before she could, she saw one last thing escape in a cloud of white, almost hidden beneath all the rest. The wisest gods had known that she would open the box, that she would fail the test and the world would be cursed, and had placed a second gift there to make that suffering bearable. Hope."

Several moments of still silence follow the story.

Henry turns the page. "There's a note here!

 _If cursed with evils from this box_

 _and kept outside by its firm locks,_

 _Pandora's hands you must possess_

 _to free the world from its distress._ "

"Greek mythology is real now, too?" Emma demands.

"Not necessarily." Regina looks again at the page, only partially attending to her own words as she speaks them. "It could easily be a story that's grown around a cursed object as it reappears throughout history. It's a tidy way of hiding magic. At least in this world."

Robin tugs the book towards him once she gives up on the uninformative page, fingers tracing one of the illustrations. "I've heard of it, I think. Now that I'm reminded of the story."

"How?" Emma inquires, lifting the box from the table and turning it in her hands.

"Let's just say I'm an expert in…rare and collectible treasures."

Regina snorts.

"Rather a necessity in my _former_ line of work. Anyway, it's a bit of a famous story, though I've heard different versions. The box of curses. It was supposed to be in the possession of some sorcerer a few hundred years ago, and when he died, according to legend, it vanished."

"It was the box that did that, yesterday," Belle surmises.

"It would seem that it was," Charming agrees.

"So…we should open the box again," Emma suggests, reaching for it. "Let out hope. Before we end up with that curse."

Snow shrugs.

Several of them look at Regina, who skims the riddle yet again, frowning. "What am I, the hall monitor?" She sighs. "I suppose it's worth trying."

Emma tries first, gripping the box firmly in both hands and tugging at the lid. Her frustration is clear as she tries different angles, but it doesn't budge. She sets it on the table in front of her instead, and tries surrounding it with magic, twisting her fingers in sweeping gestures until the white light dissipates. The box still hasn't changed.

"Let me try," Charming insists.

They pass it around, to Grumpy, Robin, Snow, Hook, Belle, Henry—nobody can make headway.

"You're doing it wrong!"

"Why are you doing it like that?"

"Will you stop grabbing it!"

"I almost had it, why did you—"

"Are you really going to—"

"That's not going to work."

"Is that—"

"I can't believe—"

"What is that supposed to—"

Regina grits her teeth, losing track of who's complaining about what in the general volume of the room.

"Stop!" Emma finally snaps. "Stop it, everyone. It's the box that's doing this to us."

"I hate to say it, but Swan is right. I think this is going to take a little more finesse."

 ** _A week later_**

Robin jumps out of the way as a crystal vial flies towards his head and shatters mid-air behind him, pieces of it crashing into the protective shield of magic that Regina has put up around the kitchen, and piling on the floor at its edge. Now that he's within its protection, he can hear.

She huffs with frustration, tossing a handful of some herb into a soup pot bubbling on the stove. "It still won't _work."_ She flips open a cabinet, then slams it shut. "Where are they," she mutters, opening another. "I've read more about it. If we can just get it to open again, the curse should break, and then…"

She spins and throws magic at the box, which he now sees is sitting on the counter near where he'd entered. It is pure magic that she throws this time, without a potion, but he's seen her try this dozens of times in the last few days, and he knows that no matter how she twists or weaves the purple and silver strands, they won't pry open that lid.

"It's 2am," he informs her. His hand is gentle as it slides down her arm to hover lightly over her palm.

"I'm in the middle of something," she insists, her back to him. Another ingredient goes into the pot, and her hand slides away from his.

"Regina, please."

She frowns, opening one drawer, then another. It is easy to guess her thoughts, even if some might be operating below her own consciousness. That it's her fault somehow, that she must have brought this curse upon them, that it's her problem to fix, that they cannot be happy until she does.

He pulls back his hand, seeing in her stiff posture that his touch won't help. "You've been at this for hours. You should come to bed."

"It wouldn't have taken so long if I could find anything in this place," she snaps. She looks around the kitchen, scowling, as though to find drawers and cabinets she hasn't yet checked.

He looks, too, watching as she tears through another drawer in her search. "I can't find anything. I had it all in a place that made sense, but now when I'm looking for ingredients for magic it's all vanished. It's idiotic."

"Regina," he breathes. He'd reorganized the kitchen a few months back, making things easier to find when they cook.

She turns on him. "Say what you're thinking, would you. It'd save some time."

"I'm thinking that I'm worried about you."

Something bubbles over in her eyes, an anger that is partly foreign and yet familiar."Oh well that's so helpful, _thief_."

It has been a nickname, that word, said with begrudging fondness, or a teasing title, pronounced with relief that it is the opposite of king, prince, noble. But now it feels like an accusation.

Regina bottles up another vial, waving a hand over it as purple spins within its amber liquid. She tosses it at the counter and breaks it over the box with a twist of her fingers. It doesn't work.

He catches her hand gently as she goes to make another. She tears it away.

Something that feels wrong, out of control, flares in his eyes for a moment, a flash of anger, "Maybe if you weren't such a lone wolf about everything, this would be easier. If we decided things _together_. If you told me when something was wrong, _Your Majesty,_ instead of handling it all yourself as though I'm an idiotic peasant unworthy of being consulted."

"I shouldn't need to consult you about every damn—It was my house, and then you had to move in and…"

"Regina!"

They stare at each other, both too stunned to continue.

When he recovers enough to speak, his voice is quiet, but insistent. "Damn it, Regina, tell me what's really wrong."

She swipes her tears away angrily. "Nothing." It guts him, as it always does, to see her cry.

"Please come to bed with me. Take a break from all of this." He nods around them, offering his hand. "I'm sorry," he sighs. "I just came to make sure you're all right."

She shakes her head, turning away. "I know. I just need to work on this."

"But, I—"

She draws in further on herself, her arms closing around her as she moves away.

.

.

.

Robin sleeps lightly for the next few hours, alone in their bed, waking with each strong gust of wind against the windowpanes, each click and rush of air as the heating system turns on and off.

He wakes again just as the beginnings of morning light show in the blue-grey outside , staring blearily at the shifting mattress that had woken him. She blurs into his vision with a steaming mug held out in one hand. The tea is a gesture in and of itself, established between them. An olive branch.

"Hi," she murmurs as he sits halfway up, blinking the grogginess from his eyes. Her eyes are red with fatigue, her posture a mix of confidence and shyness that used to perplex him, when he knew her less.

"Hey." He searches her face. When she reaches to take his hand with her free one, he takes and leaves the mug on the bedside table, pulling her gently into bed.

She settles against him silently, her firm grip on the arm he wraps around her a sure sign of her mind's turmoil.

He searches for the right words, but nothing comes to him that could reassure her. Instead he traces the back of his fingers up and down her bare arm, from shoulder to elbow and back, over and over again, until long after her breathing slows and evens, and she drifts off to sleep.

 **Storybrooke, June 2021**

"Regina? Regina."

"Hm?" She turns to Roland from the doorway of his room. It is still the same forest green, but the toys and books have aged in an instant.

"Are you coming?"

As she takes a step toward him, her vision suddenly flickers out. The slip of a foot on stone, the sensation of falling, voices calling her name, the bright light of magic blinding her. The slap of cold water as it hit her back.

Any memory of the Underworld has come in fragments this morning, but it is that last moment she sees with sudden clarity. Mother, reaching out with magic, Regina and Emma shielding the others from it. Cora sliding back, tripping with the key in her hand, and Regina grabbing for her, both of them falling, falling…

Regina had cast a spell to return an object to its former state, hoping to return them both, or at least the key, to solid ground. Mother's magic had intertwined, interfered, hadn't it? Along with that of the Underworld's rushing river, the swirling threads of ancient magic deep within it.

Had…she been the one to do this? Had the spell really gone this wrong?

When her vision returns, Roland is staring at her, a hand on her arm.

"You don't look fine," he says flatly.

She stands straighter, hoping he doesn't notice the hand flattened against the wall and supporting her. "I will be, all right?" She catches the hand he'd stretched out to her and squeezes it. "I just need to—figure some things out."

He considers this for a moment, then sighs and turns to the stairs.

"Do you know where I left my phone yesterday?"

"Nope." He bounces down the stairs with quick steps, Regina following him as she continues to look around. "Oh, wait, there it is!"

Roland hands her a phone that had been sitting in a corner of the kitchen counter. It's not the same device she remembers, but it is recognizably hers—something that she would pick. Black, sleek, simple. The lock screen is that same photograph of Henry and Roland, with Henry in Storybrooke High's cap and gown. The screen blinks on, requesting a passcode. Henry's birthday does the trick.

8:13AM, Saturday, June 5, 2021. Her fingers freeze on the screen. She shakes her head impatiently. Roland is standing before her, a foot taller than he was when she last saw him, and it is her phone that is making it start to sink in?

She reaches out with her magic, thin tendrils of it spreading beneath her feet into the floor below, out into the garden, and then as far as she can reach down the street. It…feels real. No odd shimmers of other magic; no evidence that what she's experienced has been tampered with. And the room doesn't have that film, that shimmering filter she's been trained to recognize in magical illusions.

"Who're you calling?" Roland asks from across the room. He's busy tugging the fridge door open and reaching for something.

Her magic flickers with the distraction, and she draws it back in impatiently, satisfied for the moment that she's not under someone else's magical thumb. "Your papa."

Roland tilts his head curiously. "You can't. He's in the forest, remember. Until tonight."

Sure enough, the line goes straight to voicemail. _It's me,_ she says shortly, glancing at Roland. _Call when you get this._

Roland looks deeply unsettled as she walks over to get down the milk jug he'd been straining to reach, and she has to remind herself that he's _ten_.

"Do you still want to make pancakes?"

"What?"

"You promised pancakes for breakfast."

"Did I?"

"Mmhm. With chocolate chips. Lots and lots of them."

Her lips quirk into half a smile. " _Did I?_ "

He adopts a full-on pout that is clearly a continued joke between them.

She can see in his eyes, that he's teasing her in an effort to cheer her up. Her smile fades, and not-possibly-reality sinks back in. "Give me a moment. Then we'll make breakfast."

"Okay."

She kisses the side of his head, and walks through to the living room, out of his earshot.

It scares her at first, when she types out Henry's cell and the call doesn't go through. But a quick look in the phone's contacts reveals his number must have changed, and she dials him again.

" _Hello, this is Henry Mills. I'm sorry I can't get to the phone right now. Please leave a message. Thanks!"_

She swallows, and hangs up before she can worry him with a confused message. He sounds so _old_. His voice is low and resonant and…grown up.

She forces the anger back into her stomach. That impulse won't help at the moment, at least not until she knows for sure what's going on. Henry. Robin. Roland. That leaves the others she was with, back in…wherever they were, in the Underworld. She strains to pulls faces out of the blurry memory. Emma, David, Snow…

The loft is one number, at least, that has not changed.

Mary Margaret picks up on the second ring.

"Regina?"

"What's the date, Snow?"

"What?"

"The date. Now."

"Um, June…fourth? Fifth? Fifth, I think."

"Of…"

"June."

"Snow."

She falters at the other end of the line. "Twenty…twenty one? Regina, I don't know what you think you're accomplishing here. Why are you asking me that? What's going on?"

"I need you to come help me."

"I don't think that's a good—"

"It's important." She hears a young boy's voice chattering in the background. Neal, she realizes with yet another jolt. He'd be—almost five now, wouldn't he?

Just her then, she can be almost certain. That spell she'd cast, or perhaps the water— "Come, would you. Now. And bring Emma."

"I don't think she'll—"

Regina squeezes one hand into a fist, then forcibly lets it go. She has neither the time nor the patience for this. "Call her. Get her to come."

"All right! All right. I'm coming."

Regina forces herself to loosen her grip on her phone and un-wrinkle her brow before she heads back to the kitchen.

"Let's put together a quick breakfast, okay," she tells Roland, thinking her voice sounds all wrong in its overstudied nonchalance. "Then we need to get dressed. Mary Margaret and Emma are coming over."

"Really?" He comes closer. "We don't have to cook, if we don't have time."

She redoubles her efforts to seem calm. Robin should be there when she explains to him, surely. And as much maturity as he's gained in being ten, ten is still very, very young. In any case, she hardly knows what explanation she could give. To him, clearly, it's just a normal Saturday. "No, we'll cook. Really."

"Okay." He slides off of his stool, pulling a steel mixing bowl from a lower cabinet. "You seem different today."

"Different?"

"Yea, a good different." He reaches up to set the bowl on the counter. "I like it."

"Do I usually seem…not like this?" She catches the word _here_ before it escapes her lips. "Bad?"

"Not _bad_ , Regina," he insists, as though it's a ridiculous proposition. "Just not _happy_."

A confused jumble of anger, disbelief, disappointment floods through her, and she fights very hard not to recognize that at its base is a stab of fear.

.

.

"What are you wearing?"

The warm, humid air of early summer washes over Regina as she opens the door for Snow, and her body's visceral reaction to the weather causes her to remember that where she had been before, it had been cold. She glances down at the cobalt blue dress she'd chosen from the back of her closet, one she's worn at least a dozen times before. "Good morning to you as well."

Snow narrows her eyes, then tilts her head as though something else has caught her interest.

"What?" Regina snaps after several seconds of scrutiny.

"It's just I…haven't seen you in anything but black and gray in quite a while. I'd forgotten how different you look in…" Snow trails off with a sigh. "Never mind. Emma's on her way. Although I think she was as confused as I am. It's been a few years since you've invited us to cross this threshold." Snow takes a slow, deep breath, then walks with Regina into the house. "So, what is it?"

Regina pushes the door shut as she takes in this information. In different circumstances, she would laugh at it— _her_ , regretting the apparent loss of friendship with Snow White.

"You look…strange."

Regina glances past Snow into the kitchen to check on Roland. "Good." It'll be easier to explain that way.

Emma's arrival at the door cuts off the reply hovering on Snow'a open lips.

"Emma!" Snow smiles at her daughter, and Regina wonders if it's possible that the awkwardness she sees between them is entirely in her head. It certainly doesn't seem to be. "How have you been?"

"Fine."

Nothing much of Snow's appearance had been different, but Emma's is. Her hair is suddenly shorter than in Regina's recollection, and her eyes are somehow more tired, worn. "Since you last saw her, what, a few hours ago?" Regina adds, rolling her eyes.

Emma tilts her head. "Actually, it must've been a few weeks, right?"

Snow looks down. "Three. I think." It's clear that the number comes readily to her.

Regina scowls at them. What is with this place?

"Your dress is blue."

"Thank you, Emma. Any other obvious facts you'd like to point out, for the good of the group?"

Snow gives Regina that look, the one she thinks will calm her down, but usually just enrages her.

Emma ignores them both. "Can we get to the point here? Why call us?" She looks around to see who else might have come. "And for that matter, where's your ex for the 'urgent meeting'? Please don't tell me we've got some other idiot trying to take over the town or something."

Regina fights, mostly with success she thinks, not to show the stab of Emma's casual confirmation lancing through her. "Somewhere in the forest, apparently. Off grid."

"Mary Margaret! Emma!"

"Hey Roland," Emma greets.

"You've gotten so big!" Snow enthuses, reaching for a hug. "What grade are you in now?"

"I just finished fourth."

"Wow!"

"This is insane," Regina mutters under her breath.

"Hm?" Emma turns to her with razor-sharp eyes.

"Roland," Regina clears her throat, "We need to talk for a few minutes. Do you think you could find something to do upstairs for just a little while? Since you've finished your breakfast."

He sighs heavily, a child who knows perfectly well that he's been banished to a different room while the adults discuss grown up things.

"It was wonderful to see you!" Mary Margaret adds, reaching out an arm. "It's been too long."

Roland submits to a second hug, smiling crookedly at her as he heads upstairs.

Regina leads them into the kitchen, gathering up Roland's breakfast dishes and spinning around once she's deposited them in the sink. "I'm from the past."

"You're what?"

Snow stares, looking at her with fresh eyes, and Regina can see the wheels turning. The dress, perhaps, the way she looks different from whatever they had expected. "But—How did this—when were you—?"

"2018. March, or so, I think, although it was hard to tell, there."

"The Underworld," Emma realizes.

"Yes, that's the last thing I remember, although most of it's hazy. I fell toward the water, I cast a spell. And I woke up here."

"How do you know you haven't just forgotten?"

Regina lifts up the edge of one sleeve and turns her arm to show them the mark she noticed while getting dressed. Red, raised, and barely healed. "The box, remember? That's my burn."

"But, how is that even possible?"

Regina rolls her eyes, tugging the sleeve back over the burn. "Emma, I really thought you'd reach a point where you stopped asking that question."

"I'm just saying—"

"I don't know, all right. I have no idea. All the spell was supposed to do was to land me back on the riverbank. How do you remember it? The Underworld."

Emma frowns. "We were losing the fight. Cora took the key, and threw it into the river to be carried off."

Regina looks at her sharply. "The box was never opened?"

"No," Snow shakes her head. "It was all we could do to find a portal and get back here before she trapped us. The curse was never broken."

.

.

.

"So Henry's at school."

Snow had insisted on moving them to the living room, though Regina had resented the implication that she might be feeling faint.

She's trying to think of things she wants—needs to know here, to compare.

"In college, in New York. Studying writing."

Regina smiles a half-smile at Emma's words, relieved to have that confirmed at least. Mother and daughter are sitting on the sofa, but Regina is leaning against a chair beside them, refusing to sit.

"You're so proud of him," Snow enthuses. "We all are. He's wonderful."

Regina looks around the living room again, at the absent photographs, the crisp and clean fabrics, the empty coffee table. "And, Robin?"

After the sting of Emma's earlier words, these make the wound feel hollow.

"You split up about six months after we got back." Snow's voice softens. "Everyone's had— _has_ problems, because of the curse. But the two of you were…you never really told us why."

Snow reaches out to take Regina's hand, and seems further convinced by her allowing it that she is definitely not from this time.

She'd worked so hard, back home, to let people in. How on earth had she, in any future, lost sight of all of that to the point that those relationships had crumbled around her?

"This must be a lot to take in."

"This can't be _real_ ," Regina protests, her hands tensing into fists as she pulls away from Snow, her voice dark and rough. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this. All I did was cast that spell, and it dropped me three and a half years in the future."

"Not everything goes to plan." Snow says, her voice soft with hurt.

Regina looks up sharply. "Where _is_ your Charming husband? I'd assumed he'd be joining you."

Snow startles. "You didn't ask."

"Since when does he need an invitation to follow you somewhere?"

"We don't go _everywhere_ together."

Regina gives her a skeptical look. "You do where I come from."

"Things…happen. We're not as…close as we used to be."

Regina stares, catching a glimpse of Emma's discomfort out of the corner of her eye.

"You're not—"

"No, no, we're still together, it's just…" Snow sighs and shakes her head. "We may know the curse makes it worse when we're arguing, but…"

After a short but somehow deeply uncomfortable silence, Regina finishes the thought, the echo of the box's curse shivering through her veins. "It doesn't feel like it when you're actually in it." Her voice is harsher than she'd meant it to be, and then she mutters more to herself than to them, "And apparently, nobody tries very hard to stay connected here."

Snow blinks and glances away, clearly stung. A few quiet tears drip down the other woman's cheek. Not the heavy, ugly tears of the hopeful young woman she once knew, but weary ones, nearly hidden.

Emma sighs as though this is a somewhat regular occurrence. "I'll check around. Make sure nobody else has…travelled here or whatever." She turns to Snow. "You should check the book. See if there's anything about this, or if anything has changed. New pages, missing pages..."

Snow takes a deep breath and swipes away the tear shining on her cheek. "Henry left it with us, in case something happened."

"Be discreet, would you," Regina says sharply. "Just in case."

"I was a detective," Emma reminds her with a roll of her eyes. "Of sorts. I think I can handle myself."

Regina stands, ready to be done with this conversation and its glimpses into her not-so-wished-for future. "I'll see what's different here from my memories. Maybe that will explain how, exactly, that spell went so wrong. Or what else it could've been."

"I suppose it's as good a place to start as any," Snow agrees as Emma stands and heads toward the door, and she and Regina begin to follow.

"Henry will be home tomorrow," Snow reminds them.

"Oh, right," Emma agrees. "Are you still going to meet him at the bus?" She seems to remember why they're here. "I mean, you were going to meet him at the bus, and drop him off at the loft for dinner."

Regina takes a deep breath. "I can do that. I tried to call him, earlier, but he didn't pick up."

Snow gives her a searching look as they enter the foyer. "Let's try again. At least to let him know there might be a…bit of a situation when he gets back."

Emma frowns. "He has a final in the morning."

Regina raises an eyebrow. "You know he'd hate that."

"Yes," Emma sighs. "He would."

"You sure you okay to do this?" Snow presses.

Regina casts her a momentary glance, then dials without comment. This time, thankfully, he picks up. "Mom?"

Regina blinks. Even having heard his voicemail earlier, his grown up voice is a lot to take in. "Hi, Henry."

"We have a—situation, here." Emma says.

"A Storybrooke situation?"

Snow adds, "Yes."

"Grandma?" He seems pretty surprised to hear all three of them on the phone. And if their seemingly distant relationships are anything to go by, Regina reasons, he probably is.

"Your last final is tomorrow morning right?" Emma asks.

"Yeah. I'll take the bus first thing after."

"Ok."

"Do you—want to tell me about it? I can step outside…"

"No, no you keep studying," Regina tells him, "Really. It'll keep til tomorrow. Don't worry about it."

He seems to consider this over a silent line, then sighs heavily with the knowledge that it's an argument he won't win. "Fine. I'll be there soon ok?"

"Yes. I love you."

Emma and Snow echo her sentiment before they hang up.

Regina frowns to fight back the tears.

"You should come to dinner tomorrow," Snow offers in her sympathetic voice. "We can't steal Henry from you on his first night back." She catches and squeezes her hand, and before Regina can protest, has caught her in a hug. "All we've wanted for you these past few years was for you to be happy," she says. "That's all we've wanted for you for a long, long time." Regina's eyes wrinkle up as Snow pulls back and squeezes her hand once more, but she forces the tears not to fall. Then, suddenly, the white walls and dark wooden floors blur, and for a second they are replaced with a searing orange-red, a flash of black rocks on the ground, the rush of a river. Regina's head spins as she struggles to keep her balance. She barely registers it as Snow and Emma grab her wrists to steady her, and it is another minute before her vision clears.

Regina immediately waves off Snow's concerned expression, blinking rapidly to clear whatever that had been. "I'm fine."

"No, you're not," Emma argues, stubborn as ever.

"What was it? What happened?" Snow insists.

"I thought I saw…" Regina murmurs, looking around again. The orange-red flickers into her vision, then flickers back out. "Nothing." She looks back up, meeting Snow's concerned and Emma's skeptical gaze, and opening the door for them. "I'm fine. Call if either of you finds anything useful."

.

.

.

It may be pointless, but she dials Robin again after they've left. Just to check.

Straight to voicemail. She scowls and tosses the phone onto the table in the foyer. What exactly would she be hoping for anyway? Might as well glean what clues she can from the house, with Roland still happily occupied by his legos upstairs.

As she'd noted while talking to Snow and Emma, nothing much has changed about the front hall, save for its nearly empty shoe mat and coat closet.

She walks through the kitchen to the living room, running her fingers along the edges of school photos tacked to the fridge— _fourth grade_ the inscription reads under Roland's; _twelfth grade_ under Henry's.

The living room has more to observe.

A few of the bookshelves seem off, empty, so she begins to read the titles. Some of the classics must be with Henry, at school, she realizes, shaking her head.

There also used to be a few photographs on the wall opposite the television, now missing. Her three boys sitting at the kitchen counter with mugs of cinnamon hot chocolate, Henry and Roland laughing at the whipped cream in Robin's beard. The four of them sharing Sunday brunch at Granny's with the Charmings. Nothing has been put up to replace them.

Out of bitterness, she wonders, or could this _her_ simply not bear to be confronted with them each day?

She'd been that way, once, about certain portraits in her castle that she'd banished to a far-off wing. Of Daddy, Snow. Of long-dead relatives pictured smiling with their spouses and children who she'd never known but hated fiercely.

Frustrated, stressed, lonely tears begin gather in her eyes. She forces them back before they can fall.

It is not a new feeling, exactly.

Loneliness has been a constant ache in her life. One of losses piled onto each other so heavily she could not free herself from their weight, of a spirit too resilient to simply give in.

Even with Henry and Robin and Roland and so many people who had grown to think of her as their family, as a friend, it had not been unknown.

But the suddenness of this…

When Marian came back. She swallows against memory. That had been…different somehow. A just, logical conclusion to the life of the person she had become, the risks she had taken, the vulnerability she had shown.

Has she…gotten used to her family? Comfortable? Complacent?

They would all— _her_ them would all—hate that line of thinking.

 _Don't you dare think like that_ Robin would say, as though he could will the thoughts out of her mind by sheer determination. As though he could steal from his own stock of optimism, and gift it to her, the way he is used to with coins and jewels. A spark lights in her chest as she feels an echo of the last touch she can recall; his fingers glancing over her wrist in a gesture of comfort as they walked…where? The memory flutters away, insubstantial.

Snow would scold her for it, too. _Don't be ridiculous_ and _you'll find each other again_ or other such nonsense, Charming nodding as though it was a wise observation.

Henry would give her a hug.

Even Emma would probably object to such a bleak description of her past.

But _her_ Robin and Snow and Emma and Henry aren't here, are they?

She reaches for her phone and calls her son again before she's thought it through.

"Mom?"

"Hi, Sweetheart." She fights to keep her voice even.

"You sure everything is ok?"

"Fine. I'm fine. I just…I love you."

"I love you too, Mom."

She bites her lip at his voice, the deep, confident voice of a grown-up. "Go back to studying, okay? Do well on your test."

"You sure I don't need to be there now?"

"Positive. Good luck tomorrow."

"Thanks, Mom. I'll be there soon, okay?"

"I can't wait. Bye, Sweetie."

"Bye."

The silence at the end of the call leaves her feeling all the emptiness of a suddenly grown up son, and a suddenly different life.

What will a solution be? Returning to where she was, to the time she's left? Or will she simply be forced to adapt to a future life she doesn't remember living?

She has to get back.

But then, if this is the future it seems to be, is it worth going to back to reach it?

Because while she, Regina, seems to have landed squarely in some future, the house seems to have landed in its past. The days before Roland and Robin, before Emma, before Henry, even. The days of mind-numbing, heart-wearying sameness. Of Graham, and a bed that felt empty even when it was not, and a version of _her_ who tried desperately to forget what it felt like to love, to experience passion, to feel joy, and who remembered just enough to still feel the hollowness and nausea and be disgusted with herself. Of a black, shriveled, broken heart straining to feeling _something_ , to be close to _someone_ ; a heart that had forgotten how to love, how to be loved.

What's happened to her?

She scoffs at herself. As though learning of her break with Robin, with Snow, with Emma, with—everyone, seemingly, except for her children—has not been enough to tell her exactly what kind of person she's become in this future.

As a strange as it all is, she reminds herself, she's not in a total stranger's home. _Something_ about each room is slightly familiar, like a book she'd read years ago. She has to know some things about this person—about herself. What would't, _couldn't possibly,_ change. Those portraits in the Enchanted Forest—she hadn't destroyed them had she? Even at the height of all of that she hadn't had them burned or ordered them thrown into a river.

Struck with a new idea, she leaves the kitchen for the stairs to the basement, walking with a new sense of purpose and waving her hand before the crisp white wall. The door to her hidden room materializes.

It seems more or less unchanged from her memories, though she notes that the table on which she'd once placed Pandora's box is empty.

She walks past her cloak, a locket, a couple of gold-tipped arrows, various remnants of old lives, and straight to her desk, tapping the bottom left so that the hidden drawer appears and opens.

It's all here.

Of course she couldn't possibly have gotten rid of them, destroyed them.

The photographs that were missing from upstairs. Birthday notes on thick, unlined paper. Letters Robin has written to her on special occasions, or sometimes for no particular reason at all, carefully folded and stored.

She picks the letters up with a hand she tells herself is not at all unsteady, skimming over the well-known words, then reaching for a final, unfamiliar one, dated from 2018.

 _One of my fondest memories in our courtship happened because you lost faith in a letter you'd had for a very long time. May this letter instead be a promise you can always trust, and one you keep to remind yourself if ever my words or deeds do not. I love you. You are the second chance I had scarcely hoped to have, and I feel honored and blessed to know that I am also yours._

 _As beautiful as they are, I have no need of these golden arrows, here. May this one remind you that you will always have the strength to rescue yourself._

 _Happy anniversary, My Love. The memory of your boldness, that night in the forest, will forever bring a smile to my lips._

 _Robin._

Oh, Robin.

The sound of metal slinking to the ground interrupts her train of thought.

Beneath the note, wrapped in a separate piece of parchment, a long gold chain trails. A gold ring of hammered metal hangs from it. One of the gold-tipped arrows, she realizes with another glance at the letter, that she gave him when he helped her break into Zelena's castle. When he trained an arrow on her to stop her from cursing herself with sleep, and said he saw a mother's touch in her care of Roland. When he told no one else of what she had meant to do to herself.

Regina closes her eyes. The necklace, she lifts over her head and tucks under her dress.

When she opens her eyes, her vision flickers again. Veins of red-orange, shifting light. _The Underworld_ she realizes as her vision clears, suddenly sure. That's what she'd been seeing, when she stood by the door with Snow and Emma. But why?

She stands with renewed energy for her search. If she knows herself, there will be research on the curse hidden here somewhere.

* * *

 _The wait for the next one won't be nearly so long-Emily._


	3. Chapter 3: Reckonings

Regina glances back at Robin with a frown.

She and Henry have been combing through her vault's bookshelves for anything discussing Pandora's box. Robin, meanwhile, kneels on the stone floor with forest maps spread out before him, examining the rift's course. But his teeth dig into his bottom lip as he looks down at the pages, and even from the other side of the room, his poor mood radiates.

She leaves Henry to continue and walks over to Robin, threading one hand through his hair at the base of his skull.

He cranes his neck to see her. Head on, his blue eyes seem darker and heavier, even, than she'd noticed.

Her hand falls away from him when he stands, but he searches them out again, his thumbs running over her knuckles as though he's the one trying to soothe _her_. He clears his throat, looking down at their hands before his gaze returns to her. "I rather dislike this place."

A ripple of unease shivers through her, and she reminds herself sharply that although the evil queen's lair and her victims are _her_ first thoughts in this place, it's not what he means. "Too many stones?" she teases. "Too few trees?"

His lips twitch, but it's hardly a smile. He looks around again, then back at her, and his haunted eyes help his words fall into place. She retraces his gaze around this back room, from its bookshelves and magical curiosities; to Henry, who is doing an excellent job of pretending not to notice them; to the strong lock on the door; and finally, to a long stone table tucked against the wall behind her. "This is where you put me. When…" _I died_. It's not quite a question.

She'd used her magic to protect his wife from being pulled out of this realm, from possible torture or death at her own hands. And in the process of violating rightful time, that magic had killed her. Elsa had thrown ice at her on a whim, trapping her soul before it could escape. And after three days when everyone had thought her dead, Robin had been the one to bring her back.

She'd missed everything during those three days. Henry's pain and mourning. Robin's. Snow's. There have been glimpses, passing words.

But the depth of his pain still surprises her enough to take her breath away, as does the guilt she feels for causing it. Her gaze snags on his, and the longing in his eyes, and the way he tries to soften it for her benefit…

"I'd forgotten," she confesses. "I was barely conscious when you woke me."

He squeezes her hands.

Her voice is soft, teasing, but not quite light. "I remember it being colder."

His grip tightens. "Don't even _joke_ about that."

She tilts her head, studying his strained features. " _Robin._ "

"When I woke you, you were freezing cold. Barely alive. And I was so angry at myself for what I'd said, and done…"

She lifts one of his hands to her neck, over her pulse, and he lets out a shuddering breath. "I'm _fine_."

He's told her of the nightmares, waking her in the dark early morning and explaining in a gravelly whisper that he's just seen her collapse to the ground, that he's heard Henry's cries, that he's felt his paralyzed limbs as she froze him so that she could back away. But like this, wide awake…she hadn't known. Could the curse be driving this, making it worse?

"Hey, found something!" Henry looks at them. "It can wait a minute…"

Robin nods as if to say _go ahead._

She takes his hand from her neck and kisses the back of it. "We're coming." She searches his eyes one last time, then releases him gently and rejoins her son.

"Do you know this guy?" He holds up a thin, leather-bound volume with a belted clasp. Inside the front cover, the name _Elymas Milner_ is scrawled in cursive.

"That's my mother's great grandfather, I believe."

"Really?" Henry tilts his head, tracing the name with one finger.

She feels Robin come to stand behind her, and reaches back for his hand. "The last name changed spelling at some point. Why?"

Henry opens the book to a page about a quarter of the way through.

Sketches fill both sides of the paper. The box.

Henry turns the page eagerly, and they both skim through several pages of entries.

 _Before it came into my family's possession, this box belonged to a wealthy man who kept it on display in his home. As far as I can tell from my research, it sat in his library untouched and unopened for decades. However, upon his death, it was given to his daughter and son-in-law, who knew nothing of its past. They opened it, and brought the curse upon their house. It is rumored all manner of evils befell them._

 _The house lies abandoned now, as does the village on its estate. The son-in-law and his wife's brother fought over their inheritances, and killed each other. The wife and her young daughter were the only survivors, and she passed the story down to her child, warning her never to open the cursed object._

 _It has been in the collection of some cousins of mine, who had moved away from that village, and believed themselves to be distantly descended from that daughter. They passed it down for generations, along with the story warning them never to open it. The family has fallen on hard times after a fire damaged their home, and wishes to sell the object. My aunt worries that their misfortunes may be a result of having the box in their possession._

 _I became curious to study it, and, wishing to assist my family, I agreed to purchase it from them._

What follows are a variety of observations about the etchings on the box and their possible meanings. These continue on for several weeks, as the man studies and prepares to open it, describing the design of his magical net that he believes will contain its dark magic when he does. They find this event about fifteen pages later, in an entry dated nearly three weeks past the first.

 _I opened the box today._

 _I was prepared for it to be unpleasant, but when I lifted the lid the tiniest amount, the worst feeling came over me. Like everything bad in the world had been gathered into that one place and time, and nothing else had or would or could exist. Even my magic couldn't resist that hopelessness. The net may have prevented the curse from spreading to the surrounding homes, but that is all that it did. I am convinced that, had I left the box open for any length of time, the curse would have broken through my magical constraints._

 _I have forced it closed again. I do not believe that this object is worth studying, even for its rarity and the family legend behind it. No one deserves to experience it, neither for study nor by accident nor by the malicious actions of another. I would merely leave it be, but I worry what it might be used for if it were to fall into the wrong hands. I plan to hide it where no one will ever have access to it again. It is too dangerous to be left in anyone's collection._

 _The in-between place will do, I think. It is so hard to access, and nobody will stumble upon it, there. I will separate the box from its key, as well, to make opening it harder._

 _The fire-veins that are its gateway do not occur very often, but I will simply have to wait and search until I find one._

Henry's eyes fly to hers. This is it. "The in-between place?" he asks.

"I don't think I've ever read his journals, but he mentions that elsewhere. In one of his printed books."

She walks to a different shelf, fingers skimming over the spines and pulling the right one down, skipping over pages until she finds it. "Here. _In the non-magical world, they have what they call "mythology", stories about gods and immortals and other unlikely creatures. It has become a convenient way, over time, for us magical beings to hide our world in plain sight. One of these "myths" involves what people there call "The Underworld", the land of the dead in Greek and Roman mythology. This, however, is not entirely accurate. We can no more access the land of the dead than anyone else. But there is a place, the in-between place, where the dead can linger. Those who are waiting to move on for one reason or another, who have unfinished business, will stay there for a time._

 _It is said to mimic the appearance of an individual's home, and so while it has certain fixed characteristics, its landscape and general appearance are determined by the living home of the preponderance of its visitors. This in-between place is well hidden, and can be accessed only through portals that appear, often randomly, like cracks in the ground or veins of lava."_

"That's what it was, in the forest," Robin realizes.

"So we'll have to go there, to get the key," Henry adds. "To the in between place."

Robin takes the book when she offers it and studies the page himself. "But there's one thing I still don't understand. If he left the box and the key there, how did one end up with us? The rift must be one of the passages he describes, but surely objects do not simply fly into our world at random?"

Regina shakes her head. "I don't know. You searched? Nothing else came through the portal with it?"

"Nothing," he confirms. "There wasn't a key."

"But what we do know is that whoever had this box, originally, is related to you. To us," Henry looks excited about this revelation, "That means you might know things about where he'd hide it, or what his magic was like. That could help!"

"Yes. I suppose." A flash of worry floods through her. Surely, if this journal is with her, then it came from…and Mother must have read it, as she did almost everything on the subject of magic-bearing ancestors, so…the in-between place? Is it possible?

"What is it?" Robin asks, picking up on the shift in her thoughts even though she hasn't voiced them.

"Nothing." She shakes her head. Just a crazy thought. "Nothing at all."

.

.

.

 **Storybrooke, June 2021**

"Chocolate chip cookie dough, huh?"

"Mmhmph," Roland hums around a large mouthful.

She takes a small bite of her own, a single scoop of vanilla ice cream with chocolate chips. (That's _boring_ , Roland had objected when she ordered it, and she'd teased that it meant he'd be less likely to steal it. Not that she's eating much of it herself.)

"This is a good day," he tells her decidedly once he's swallowed the bite. He reaches for a one-armed hug around their small outdoor table, and Regina returns it, fighting the lump forming in her throat. "I love you, Regina."

She squeezes him tightly. "I love you, too."

" _Where's it coming from!?"_

 _"Get back!"_

 _"Hey!"_

 _"Call the sheriff, someone!"_

Regina and Roland look up at the shouting voices, Regina suddenly on edge, magic tingling at her fingertips.

It quickly becomes clear why there's such a commotion. Smoke billows from Gepetto's shop across the way.

Regina drops her ice cream back on the table, taking Roland's hand as they hurry to the site, where they see a situation worse than it had seemed.

Two men who she recognizes as some of Gepetto's assistants stand in the center of the workshop, staring in amazement at a fire that blazes across the entryway, blocking their escape. The flames are so strong and so high that they've begun to catch the rest of the building on fire around them.

Another shop assistant who must've been outside when it first broke out shouts to them from the sidewalk, his voice half covered by the growing roar of the fire.

"What's going on? What started it?" Roland grips her hand, and she pulls him protectively behind her.

"We don't know. Everything was fine and then there was just—fire, everywhere."

A few people from the street and neighboring businesses have noticed and have come outside, all of them watching in silent amazement as the flames lick at the building and grow stronger.

"Call the fire department would you?" the assistant cries at the growing crowd, staring at the two still trapped inside.

A woman whose phone was already raised to her ear waves for their attention. "They're coming, but they say it'll be a few minutes."

"Seriously?" Regina surveys the scene. She skims over the crowd and notes that Mrs. Carter, the third grade teacher at the school, is among them. "Could you keep an eye on him?" Regina calls, nodding Roland in her direction, still watching the building. "Roland, stay here for a moment." She waits only a second for him to nod, then hurries back to the building, hands outstretched.

The first wave of magic pushes the flames from the doorway. But in an instant, they have sprung back, stronger than before. She grits her teeth and tries again, forcing the flames down with a sharp blast of magic. They fight her, and she clamps down even harder. "Run!" she cries at the two men, her eyes trained on the flames and the small gap she has created. "Get out!"

They do as she says, and once they've crossed she relaxes her hold the slightest bit. Flames leap up as they are freed, jumping to various wood shavings and scraps. "Something isn't right." She turns to the assistants, keeping watch on the flames out of the corner of her eye. "How did it start?"

"We don't _know_ ," the shorter, blonde man insists, his voice defensive. "It was just there."

His companion shakes his head. "My back was turned when it first started."

As the flames rise and fall along the fault-line of the store's entrance, Regina catches sight of it. Two, perhaps three inches wide, flaming red-orange in the center and black on the edges, ragged as it stretches across the open wall. It looks almost like…the passage to the Underworld.

"What's going on here?" Emma calls as she jogs to meet Regina in the street. A firetruck has pulled up behind her, and the three firemen riding in it have begun to connect their hose to the nearest hydrant.

They back out of the firemen's way. "No idea."

"Is that—magic I see across the front of the shop?"

"So you can see it?"

"Just a shimmer of magic like a light or something. That's all. Why, what do you see?"

Regina frowns. "I'm not entirely sure."

Those neighbors and passers-by who have gathered on the street start to cheer as the water begins to quench the fire.

A few seconds later, however, it leaps even higher than it had been, and jumps dangerously close to the wooden siding of the small apartment building to its left.

"What do you mean by—"

Regina places a palm on Emma's arm to quieten her, watching with sharp eyes as the tides turn against the firemen.

"It's magical. It has to be. That's why it's resistant to being put out…"

Emma sighs. "What do we do first?"

 _Elymas_ , she realizes. The net. The box's curse. That _has_ to be what this is. Regina explains her plan, a magical net to stretch over the fire and quench it. He described his plan in enough detail that she should be able to copy it, and the combination of their two magics should make it stronger than his had been. In theory, anyway. They get to work quickly, weaving silver and purple magic together to create a rectangular net the size and shape of the original source of flames. The firemen continue their work, but to no avail. Once they place their net, however, the flames begin to die out on that edge of the shop. They both see with relief that the water is beginning to have its usual effect, putting out sections of the fire in the walls and roof. They stretch the net until it covers the whole area where either of them sees magic.

Emma bends, palms on her thighs, to catch her breath after the drain on her power. Regina turns around to check on Roland, relieved they've contained it. But a moment later, a line of flames spring up just to one side of their net, stretching eight or nine feet long. "Emma!" she calls.

The blonde turns in an instant, glowering at the persistent fire. It takes them another ten minutes to contain the new fire, and this time they stretch the net several yard past the flames, hoping to prevent another break.

"You still can't see it?" Regina confirms, looking at the jagged, now blackened line marking its way through the scarred concrete.

Emma shakes her head. "All I see is the magic, and the ground."

Regina frowns. What could this possibly be, that only she can see? It has to be related to the box, doesn't it? Or to the Underworld, at least? "This hasn't happened before? Anywhere in town? It's not a usual part of the curse?"

Emma shakes her head, "Not at all."

"Regina!" She turns to the voice, and finds Roland's arms tight around her. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she assures him, squeezing him back, and nodding to Emma that they'll continue the conversation later, "promise. Where's Mrs. Carter?"

"She went home 'cause I didn't need to stay with her anymore. Papa's back."

Her eyes snap up to the crowd.

Robin.

He's standing in the street with Gepetto and Friar Tuck, and Snow and Charming, and they all seem to be comforting the man as he looks, bewildered, at his half-ruined shop.

She cannot tear her eyes away from the many things she notices in an instant. His stiff posture and tense jaw and the beard growing over more of his face. "I see that."

Friar Tuck looks up at her, and in his eyes is anger, pity. She purses her lips.

When Charming looks up, too, he tilts his head, studying her with characteristic unsubtlety, clearly having been caught up by his wife on the events of the morning. She ignores the way Snow's eyes dart between them.

Robin glances at those around him, as though wondering what they're looking at, and then he catches her gaze, and stares at her, too.

His eyes are hard. Normally, he is an open book, with his every thought passing through a glint in his eyes or a quirk of his lips. But not now.

"Regina, I was telling Papa about our day," Roland explains, dragging her by the hand until only a few feet separate them.

Her gaze doesn't leave Robin's. "Were you?" She gets the impression that something in her voice unbalances him, and suddenly his stiff mask flickers. Surprise, hurt, tenderness, flash through his eyes.

"You got back a little early!" Roland observes.

"Indeed I did." Robin drags himself away from their eye contact to listen.

"It was an awesome day," she hears Roland enthuse, "I built some ships out of legos, and got ice cream. Oh, and we made pancakes for breakfast!"

"You _did_?" Robin ruffles his hair, though his facial expression is much darker than his teasing voice.

Has he been like this, in the time she's known him? This…disconnected. Going through the motions. Back when they first met, perhaps? A little. But she'd been so distracted herself that all she truly remembers is how patiently relentless he was.

"There's a plate of leftovers in the refrigerator, Roland," Regina offers, still cataloguing Robin's features as though they might hold some clue to what has happened. "You should take it with you for breakfast tomorrow."

This clearly strikes a nerve. Robin's entire body tenses, and his voice is rough and stern and sad. "I _can_ cook, you know."

Regina falters, her lips falling slightly open, stung.

Roland looks between them, and Regina can see the way Robin softens when he notices it as well. "All right. Thank you."

Her hand twitches with the urge to reach out, if only to touch his wrist for a moment, to find some way of comprehending. "Of course."

He shifts his gaze back to her, looking confused as he tilts his head. "Did something happen today?" he says softly. "Other than this I mean." He nods at the half-destroyed workroom and firetrucks around them. "I came back once I caught a spot of service and saw the missed calls."

The words leave her lips almost before she has thought of them. "Yes, something did."

His brow furrows, and he's about to reply when Snow walks up beside them. She turns straight to Roland. "Hey, Roland. Neal and I are going to head over to the playground for a bit. He would _love_ to play with you, if you'd like to come?"

Regina gives her a stern look that says she's not pleased with the unsubtle ploy, but Roland's excited about it and takes off with both of their quick nods of permission.

Robin continues to stare at her.

"What?" She feels out of place, that she cannot guess what he's thinking. "What is it?"

"I haven't seen you wear something like that in…"

She looks down at her cobalt blue dress, then back at him. Her heart pounds, and she takes a gulp of damp summer air. He'd known from the moment she walked over here that something was wrong. Of course he had.

"Never mind." he breathes.

Roland runs back to Regina and touches her arm, Snow watching from a few paces away. "Hey, Regina, did you drop this? It was on the ground by where you were standing."

He holds a necklace out before her, a finely worked long chain with a gold circle looped around it.

She hesitates only a moment as she looks at it. "Yes, Sweetie," she finally says softly, reaching to take it. She inspects the metal carefully, pressing it back together where the clasp has bent. It feels wrong, somehow, to touch this with magic.

As she lifts it back over her neck, she realizes Robin is staring even more intently.

"But—where did you…" his eyes soften. "I didn't know you wore that."

Given where she found it, she probably didn't, before…

Her gaze follows Roland as he rejoins Snow and they set out for Main Street. Then, she turns back. "Let's go for a walk. I have a few things to explain."

.

.

.

"Are you all right?"

Regina had been prepared for Snow to be emotional after her story, for Emma to interrupt with impatient energy.

But Robin…well, she should've known. She finds herself lost in his sea-glass eyes, and the pace they'd kept on the path bordering the forest falters.

He looks down, rubbing a thumb over his upper lip. "Sorry. Stupid question."

She shakes her head. "No it's not." His gaze returns to hers, and the complexity of it strikes her again. Worry, frustration, confusion, affection. "I don't know."

"I take it someone has told you that…"

"We broke up. Yes." She studies his face, noticing details that, in her concentration on her story, she had not before. Wrinkle lines that have developed on his forehead and temples. Bluish-grey shadows beneath his eyes, like he's recently lost sleep. Tremors that escape from the calm set of his jaw. Her focus on his face prevents her from thinking too much about what he sees in hers. "It was easy enough to tell when I woke this morning. But Roland and Emma and Snow confirmed it. Among other things."

"I'm sorry I wasn't here."

She shakes her head. "There wasn't anything to be done. I researched for hours, and I still can't understand exactly how this happened, let alone how or if I'll get back." She searches his features, and thinks about their fight in the kitchen, last month, last—lifetime, his broken voice, _Regina, tell me what's really wrong._ She clears her throat, and for each stab of uncertainty, she fights back with firm shoulders, with forced calm. "What else should I know?"

They walk again, their pace slower than before. "I can hardly guess where to begin."

However strange this may be for her, for him it must be even stranger, to see these past years unwound in a moment. She begins for him. "I see Roland every week."

He grows immediately more animated. "I could not have _dreamt_ of tearing you apart."

Her lips curve up into a half smile. "And Marian's all right with it?"

"She insisted upon it, as I did."

It is a relief, at least, to hear that she is still trusted. She swallows, hard. "And you and she are…"

"Friendly enough, I suppose." He freezes when he realizes her implication and faces her, pained. Hurt, even. "Regina, I've never stopped—you're still…surely you _must_ know that." His eyes plead with her, and she gets the sense that he's pleading also with _his_ her, hoping that she knew this as well.

She shivers under his gaze, caught, unblinking. "Yes, I—think I did." She fights to control the tremor in her lips, and the frustration surging in her chest. "What _happened_?" He watches their steps on the pavement. "What did I do?"

His eyes snap back to hers. "Regina, that's not... It wasn't… I'm not sure I'll be able to explain." She hadn't realized, until just now, that he had not yet said her name. It sounds right, still; the way he's always said it. And yet somehow that makes her lonely. Like pulling on a well-worn cloak only to find that its fit has changed since last it was worn.

"Try. Please."

He sighs. "When we got back, I suppose we both felt the effects of the curse. Everything was _harder_. You pulled away." He frowns, and his voice begins to crack, just barely. "And I let you. And it got to a point where we weren't good for each other anymore."

She realizes a tear has slipped down her cheek. Hadn't she grown better, _learned_ better?

"It's been two and a half years now."

She looks away, bewildered.

He softens. "It must have been a shock this morning." And she is struck by the thought that although he trusts her and has made his own observations, he also _wants_ to believe what she has told him. He wants something about this not to have been real.

She bites out the words, fighting angry tears. "I wish it were." It sounds exactly like her. Many relationships that have not done well under the curse; that has been plain to see even in one day. But to blame the curse is to take the easy way out.

Out of the corner of her eye, she thinks she sees one of his hands lift as though to reach for hers. But then it falls back to his side, and she wonders if she'd imagined it.

His brow furrows. "Your arm."

"What?"

"Your arm. The burn is still red and raised." He stares at the mark that she'd noticed this morning.

"I know. It's recent." He may have believed her, but she can see that, like her with her phone this morning, this is what's made it all start to sink in.

"I'm sorry; you'd think I'd grow used to the idea of magic, but…"

Her lips twitch, but it is not a smile. "I'll admit, this one's thrown me for a loop as well."

He frowns. "I didn't mean to be so vehement about the food earlier. I'm just not used to…"

She shakes her head. "It doesn't matter."

"It does."

His eyes linger on her face. _Stern and vulnerable at once,_ he's described her with a warm voice that she's heard only in echo today, _like a porcupine, or a maple tree._ And with a grin, _but much more beautiful._ She wonders, is that what he still sees? The sea-blue of his eyes reaches for her, and she cannot help her small smile at the way they settle something inside her. But then she remembers, and her smile crumbles. Is this how it should be, how it will always end up being, in the future? Separation, loneliness, curse?

He catches her face, sliding his hand along her jaw and running a thumb over her cheek. She leans into the touch.

"I couldn't have imagined…" he stares at his hand where it touches her skin. "Are you certain you're all right?"

She blinks heavily, an evasive answer hardly within her power, and tells him the truth. "I don't know."

The sad, aching warmth of his stare steals her breath. _Thief_ she thinks. She lifts one hand tentatively, carefully, and places it on top of his.

The world spins.

His heavy breaths grow quieter, or perhaps she simply ceases to hear them, because her sight and hearing are suddenly taken over by a rushing river and dark rocks and the glimmer of fire.

She sways, feels hands take hers, and, when she still stumbles, steady her at her waist. _Shouting, gurgling water, the bright flash of magic…a voice she recognizes, angry, unintelligible words…_

As suddenly as it had begun, the strange spell is over.

"What was that?" he asks, worry sharp in his voice. He releases her, his hands clearly steady only because of his archer's skill, and not because he is truly calm.

She shakes her head, blinking away the spots in her vision. "Nothing."

He frowns, wordlessly skeptical.

"I don't know," she amends.

Her earnest voice seems to convince him, though the worried lines on his forehead remain. His lips tremble as they watch each other and she is forcefully reminded of the man who teased a heartbroken mother to make her smile, who helped to press her heart back into her chest with wonder in his eyes. Who wouldn't dare to kiss her when they met, but who kissed her back so fervently when she did that they both nearly tumbled to the ground.

No, she decides, surprising herself with the force of her belief. She thinks of his comforting hand against her skin, Roland's excitement, Snow's hug, Emma's unquestioning help. No, the future should not be like this. No, it's not the only possibility. It can't be. But what can she do? She shakes her head at herself, and feels his eyes on her. She clears her throat. "Shall we head back to town?"

He looks down, then back up, a thousand questions swimming in his eyes, but none voiced. "All right," he finally says, and they turn back together, walking in silence.

.

.

.

 **Storybrooke, February 2018, Later that same day**

 _Regina enters, her eyes red, her shoulders set, and Robin takes an instinctive step towards her before Belle hurries forward between them. "Regina, I've read the stories-closing off a portal before everyone who must return has gone through-that could kill you."_

 _Everything in Robin's body tenses, clenches painfully, his hands in fists, his toes digging into the soles of his boots, his teeth clamped shut. No._

 _Regina's voice is flat, dark, emotionless; terrifyingly so. "I'm aware."_

 _"Regina?" he pleads, hardly aware of his own decision to speak, walking until he is barely a few feet from her, a shift in the air behind him announcing the other members of her family who have followed him. "Is she right?" The words sound weak, a whisper, a prayer to be proven wrong._

 _"Probably," she answers, a little less flatly than before. (And he hears the truth of it, '_ yes' _, he knows this woman well.)_

 _"Regina?" Elsa cries behind them, "there must be something else we can do."_

 _His gaze flicks to the girl for a moment. He sees panic in her eyes, and it fills him up as well, breathless, heart-pounding, sight-blurring, tunnel-visioned panic._

 _"Nothing."_

 _"No. No, you can't."_

 _"He's right, Regina," Emma agrees._

 _Regina's terrifying composure breaks, just a little. "I must."_

 _Robin shakes his head violently, words warped into action._

 _She walks quickly to him, the sight of her blurred with his tears, her hands on his face, soft and the opposite of comforting with the knowledge that in an hour they may never be capable of comforting him again. He cannot do this, lose either Regina or Marian to this portal that burned all of their hopes into ash. "No," he cries, her firm hands yet unable to stop the way he's shaking his head, as though the motion would hold her off, keep her here-please, let it. "You cannot make me do this."_

 _"Do what? It is no choice, and certainly not yours; the entire town will freeze over if I do not." She finally sounds as he remembers her, as she used to, before-before all this mess, when she cradled his face in her hands and told him about Daniel and taverns and fate._

 _"But—" he chokes out the word on a sob, panic making his head feel light and heavy all at once._

 _"I did not kill her, Robin, but I would have. It so easily could have been me, and I was not lying when I promised Roland that I would protect her. I will not let this magic take her back to execution in my dungeons." He clings to their contact as though to a last breath while drowning, trying to hold onto her, grasp her, keep her here, her scent and her voice and her presence; he will stop her; neither of them has to die; there has to be another way._

 _"You let me do this," she says, running a thumb across his cheeks, wiping away tears._

 _"No," he shakes his head against her hands again, compulsively, over and over._

 _"There has to be another way," Marian pleads, stepping forward. "Regina, there has to be something else we can do." Robin stares in Regina's eyes, pleading, falling into her, trying to tether her to this spot, to share everything he hasn't had time to say. Hasn't made time to say. Should have said already._

 _Regina breaks from the gaze to look over his shoulder at Marian. "It's better like this," she says._

 _"No, it's not!" Robin screams, helplessly angry "you being self-destructive does not make anything better." He tries to close the last bit of space between them. She has magically frozen him. He cannot hold her, touch her, stop her. "Let me go," he demands, drawn with anger, low, rough, (at your pain, he wants to remind her, anger at your belief in your own worthlessness.)_

 _But someone else will stop her-someone, Snow or Emma or David or-_

 _Regina's hand lifts above her head, and with a flick of her wrist he sees that everyone not meant to travel through the portal has been frozen as well._

 _She continues, her voice sad and concerned, "I will. The spell will release when I am gone."_

 _He finds with relief that his hands still move, and grabs at her wrists, his fingers digging into her flesh. "NO!" he cries, his hands gripping harder, in any other situation it would horrify him to touch her like this; it_ does _horrify him, but less than the thought of losing her._

 _"Tell Henry I love him," she begs, "you promise me."_

 _His eyes flutter shut as she presses her lips to his forehead, and he takes a shuddering breath at her lips on his skin; this will not be the last time. "Tell him I always loved him." He shakes his head against her plea. Her mouth drags against his brow, her breath warm there._

 _"You are so stubborn," she sighs, pulling back, stroking a thumb against his stumble with a teary, gentle embrace of a smile._

 _With his arms still free, he grabs her and pulls her against him, her body pressed as tightly into his as he can manage. "Not as stubborn as you," he gasps into her ear, his voice rough and tears burning in his eyes as she breathes with him._

 _"When he's old enough to understand," he feels her voice on his shoulder, the rumble soothing for its intimacy, "Tell Roland thank you for making me smile when I thought I'd lost everything." No, no no no, no dying wishes, this isn't the end of anything, it can't be, she'll tell him herself, many times, as they watch him grow into a young man._

 _"I will," Marian whispers._

 _Robin sobs, a hiccoughing, ugly thing, almost without tears._

 _Regina's hand lifts off his bicep, and so Robin drags her tighter still, pressing her painfully into him. And then his hands are being removed from her body with slow precision, and she hasn't, she wouldn't-he cannot move his own arms. None of his limbs work, he should've thought of this, that she could do this, he has nothing left to stop her but words._

 _"No," he gasps out, his heart pounding, adrenaline flooding through him. "Regina, no, please," he begs._

 _Snow's voice sounds distant as she cries, "Regina!"_

 _Gold raises the swirling portal, and the frozen soldiers fall into the fire-colored mass, vanishing one after another, but Robin rips his eyes away to watch Regina. "Don't!"_

 _Marian leans forward behind him, and then, as Regina's magic flows, eases back, safe. But Regina-she looks weak, pale, exhausted. Dying._

 _Words fall away, and he can do nothing but sob, tears falling freely, his shoulders straining against the magic with shaking, his lungs collapsing and incapable of drawing in enough air. This cannot be happening. Regina is not giving herself up like a martyr to atone for a crime she never committed; she is not depriving Henry of a mother so that Roland can have his._

 _"Go now," Regina says to Elsa, "Go!" He stores the tenor of her voice, like smooth whiskey, beautiful and warm and familiar. He'd lived decades of his life without that voice. But he hadn't known what he'd been missing._

 _His chest clenches, splinters, burns up, with her physical pain or the pain of his loss, indistinguishable, the pain is equal to him, it is ripping her away from him, a sudden wave of cold burning his spine._

 _He howls, screams in agony, and the meager relief of collapsing to the ground is no relief at all, for it means she is gone._

 _—_

 _He's walking into the crypt with Gold and Tinkerbell behind him, treacherous hope surging in his chest. He takes her hand, kneels beside her, wakens the magic that had been left with him, giving it back to her, trying to bring her back to life._

 _This is when she wakes. When she opens her eyes and hoarsely calls his name. And then he can speak to her, apologize, say what he should've said so long ago. But something's wrong; she isn't moving…he feels her wrist, her neck. No pulse. "Regina!" he screams, shaking her. She's frozen again, turning blue, her face unmoving. "Regina, I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry…"_

Robin wakes gasping. He's in their room, not the crypt. A bad dream, just a dream. She woke. She lived.

He reaches for her hand anyway, fingers pressing gently into her wrist. A strong, steady pulse. He breathes until the images have cleared from his mind, and as they do, his fingers spread to cover her hand, and he holds it as he lies down beside her, fitting their bodies together. She murmurs in her sleep, pressing back against him, and he tugs her closer, burrowing his face in her hair, tucking an ankle around hers.

He watches her breaths: in, out, in, out, in, out. Even in the whitish moonlight there is difference between nightmare and reality: flushed lips; long, sleek, recently brushed hair; a comfortable bend to her neck. And even the furrowed brow and half frown peeking out from behind her hair, because they mean that she is _there,_ and real, and herself.

For a moment he thinks of waking her, and hearing her warm, raspy, sleepy voice, seeing her chocolate eyes. But he's upset her already this afternoon. And she has so much to deal with as they prepare to leave tomorrow…

He fights to shake off the lingering images of his nightmare. This will be enough.

He presses a kiss to the back of her head, closes his eyes, and waits for the ebb and flow of even breaths to send him back to sleep.

.

.

.

 **The Underworld, February 2018**

"No," Snow marvels, "it can't be."

"What is it?" Henry asks.

They've come out of the other side of the rift in a forest, at the edge of a long dirt path.

The world had collapsed for a moment, compressing down into almost nothing, and then it had spread before them again, like a page of a book closing and re-opening on a new but related scene. The reddish tint that had blanketed their vision as they stepped onto the rift and it grew into an opening has faded, and now, the landscape looks almost normal. Almost.

"We're not back where we started, are we?" Henry inquires, looking around at tall evergreens and a mid morning sun.

"No," Regina confirms, swallowing heavily.

Charming looks around. "It's…"

"Home," Snow finishes.

"No way!" Henry looks down at Elymas's book and re-reads the passage aloud. _Its landscape and general appearance are determined by the living home of the preponderance of its visitors._

Emma takes in her surroundings, her curiosity suddenly more personal and less like that of a detective on alert. "The Enchanted Forest, huh?"

"We're in the north," Snow informs them. "That is, if everything is still be in the same place, relatively speaking. I hid in these woods, when I was on the run…"

"From me," Regina finishes. "Yes, yes. We know."

Snow glances back and smirks at her. Regina returns the look with a half-hearted glare, and catches Henry looking between them, as though trying to imagine these people who he's only ever known in his world dressed in skirts and corsets and chasing each other through the woods.

"There should be a village," Charming adds. "Perhaps fifteen miles to the east. We can head there."

"If it exists," Emma interjects.

"Might as well start walking," Snow chimes in.

"Fine," Emma sighs. "Lead the way, I suppose."

They set out on the dirt road, walking on the side in case other travelers appear, or they need to duck into the tree line.

"Well, Henry," David says, clapping his shoulder. "You always said you wanted to see it. I think this might be as close as you're going to get."

Henry beams.

Regina spares a grin for his excitement at finally seeing the place. Robin glances at Regina and squeezes her hand.

It will be strange, to be here, but it is unavoidable. And perhaps, it won't be so bad.


	4. Chapter 4: Robin's Story

**Robin's Storybrooke, February 2019**

Snow and Charming are trying to torture him.

Or at least that's what this feels like to Robin. Attending Regina's birthday drinks with the Charmings had been one thing, but at the end Neal's babysitter had called with some minor problem, and now he's the one walking a tipsy Regina home. He wouldn't even have agreed to come, as insistent as she had been this fall about giving her space, but when Snow had implied that she _'_ d _asked_ if he was coming, he had given in.

Her flushed cheeks and bright eyes absorb his attention, contrasting as they do with her grey suit dress and the black peacoat draped gracefully over one of her arms. Even as her relatively good mood bolsters his, a frown tugs at his lips. He knows from experience that it won't last long, that as even the slightest edge of drink wears off, her happiness will fade like the temporary illusion it was.

A few blocks from the house, a hand on his arm stops their progress. Her wide, dark eyes focus on his in the dim light. "Your eyes are beautiful," she murmurs.

"You're drunk." Hope throbs in his chest; springs through his veins like fire.

"Maybe."

"Definitely."

"So?" Her hand settles on his chest. His body thrums with their closeness.

"What're you doing?"

"What does it look like?"

His hands fall to her hips, contradictory urges telling him to push her away, to pull her closer. "Regina…" She bends closer, hands curling around his jacket collar, eyes never leaving his. He can feel the heat coming off her in the late winter chill, the acute awareness of it almost a touch itself.

One of her hands slides around his neck; cool, ungloved skin touching his. "Maybe tonight, I don't have to think so much."

" _Regina_ ," he croaks, as her lips hover over his, so, so close.

" _What?_ "

He pushes her gently away. "I _can't_." The flames in his veins die down into embers, embers to ash.

She sobers quickly, pulling away, his skin empty where she'd touched him. She turns her head, walking with her face shadowed from him, her unsettled breaths just loud enough for him to hear.

He fights a desperate urge to apologize and take back his words, to pull her into his body and kiss her until they both forget why they haven't in four agonizingly long, all-too-short months. Her shoulders shake—the cold, he wonders, or pent-up frustration, or an almost-hidden sob?

If only being with him didn't rob her of even the briefest of good moods.

When they reach her door, she turns on him in the bright porch light. "Why haven't you come to see me?"

His stomach lurches. He thinks of their brief conversations here, in the doorway, these past months. _The weather is horrible today,_ and _Do you need to borrow an umbrella?_ , and all the things left unsaid those days, the eyes reaching and yet scared of what they might find. And so rarely, the real words: _Roland asks about you often_ and _Are you doing all right?_ and _Yes, we should talk someday_.

With each, he'd watched her crawl deeper into her shell, farther away from him.

He searches out her eyes, swallowing against the rush of the contact, the pain in their depths. "It wasn't helping either of us," he finally says.

She presses her lips together and nods curtly, looking at the ground.

He sees tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.

Clearly it's not the waning effects of liquor that have pulled at her mood this evening, but him. "Goodnight, Regina."

She turns and opens her door. "Goodnight."

Halfway across the lawn, he stops to catch his breath, running a hand over his face. Her perfume lingers on his jacket, and his skin fairly buzzes with her touch.

But they can't do this. They can't.

He can't take it.

And if she were to confuse what he wanted, to think a few drinks and the occasional romp in her bed were enough for him, he wouldn't forgive himself.

It has to be like this.

* * *

 **Robin's Storybrooke, June 2019**

" _Yeah, I'll be right there_ ," Robin lifts a shoulder to hold the phone, pushing the door open with his now-free hand. " _Sounds good. Bye."_

"Oomph." His phone clatters to the ground, the Granny's takeout bag landing a few feet away, though he somehow manages not to completely knock over whoever it is he's run into. "I'm sorry, I didn't see—Regina."

She holds out the bag he'd dropped. "Hi."

They stare at each other.

Robin lifts the bag to break the silence. "Breakfast. Roland wanted muffins, and my baking skills, unlike yours, leave something to be desired."

Smiling softly, she raises a hand to shield her face from the sun. "You left Roland in the apartment by himself?"

"No, Marian's there."

Shock rushes over her face.

"No just—" he huffs in frustration "—she's picking him up for the weekend. I was sent out for breakfast while he decided which of his thirty stuffed animals is making the trip." He can see it flash through her eyes, the assumption that _they're_ the family. It makes him want to shake some sense into her. Or maybe kiss some sense into her. He squeezes his eyes shut to get a grip. But after all the things they've been through together, could she truly think, even for a moment, that—

"He does have a lot of them."

"Hm?"

"Stuffed animals."

"Right." He searches her face, but most of the time it is closed to him, masked. And always with that flicker of pain, like talking to him makes her feel worse.

"You could teach yourself." She gestures towards the bag of pastries. "They're not so hard to make."

 _Wouldn't have to if you were around._ He bites his tongue before he says it.

"I should go." She starts to push the door open.

"Wait."

She looks back over her shoulder. He tries to find the right words, some opening, something real and raw, but as he tests the weight of each on his tongue, all he tastes is the bitterness of their fights, the wounded, hardened iciness of her stare.

"Nothing. I hope you have a good day."

She smiles, not quite reaching her eyes. "You too."

* * *

 **Robin's Storybrooke, August 2019**

"Papa, come look at my painting!" Roland drags Robin into the house without preamble.

Regina gives Roland an eager smile that sobers slightly once the boy looks away.

Robin hasn't been inside this house in…three months. Has it really been that long since the last time he came in to help Roland pack his things? It is spotlessly clean. Not a rarity, by any means, but the absoluteness of it, the complete lack of empty water glasses on the counter or spread-out blankets on the sofa or bookmarked books on the coffee table, stands in stark comparison to the home they'd shared.

She only ever kept things so pristine as a way of taking control over some small aspect of her life, as a defense mechanism for darker days.

 _The photos_ , he realizes, forcing himself to pay attention as Roland points out various features of the drawing he'd done with Regina this morning. He keeps looking up between responses, staring at the now-empty spaces on the wall. He'd loved those, and she'd…

Anger surges in his chest. But the anger at her lasts only a breath before it turns in other directions. He's thought himself lonely this year, but to live as she does, with only bad memories for company, refusing herself good ones… _Why_ couldn't the world see fit to leave her alone, now; to let her be happy. Why did it always have to take from her, not only her family and friends and choices but her trust in herself, turning the very things meant to love and protect her into weapons? (When had he allowed himself to become one of those things? Why couldn't _he_ make her happy?)

The last time they'd been apart, when Marian returned, Roland had been like this, dragging them into each others' lives. But then, it had been different. They'd just begun.

Now they know what it's like to be together, and everything about their not-quite-togetherness aches so much more.

"I have somewhere to be." Robin and Roland turn to see her in the doorway.

"Right, sorry." Robin clears his throat. "We can go."

"Papa, I didn't show you the _other_ one."

"Hm? Oh, sorry Roland. What other one?"

Roland pulls his first painting off the easel to reveal a second one behind it. He's painted a woman who is clearly Regina, smiling at a little boy as she chases him through a yard with a garden hose. "We did that last summer, remember Regina?"

Robin glances back to see her half-smile and nod. "Yes, I remember."

That had been one of the last good days in their relationship, laughing and dodging Henry's water balloons and sitting in the sun-dried grass to dry off. Later that night, as he'd washed his face, still grinning, she'd come in with a mild frown, as though her own good mood had to be hidden for its fragility.

"We haven't played like that in a _while_ ," Roland comments.

Robin fumbles for a response, and is grateful to hear Regina step in. "That was fun. It's a lovely drawing."

When Roland looks up at him, Robin sees tears beginning to fall. "What is it, son? What's wrong?"

"Do I have to leave Papa? I miss Regina when I don't see her."

Robin puts a hand on his shoulder, trying to keep his voice even. "It's all right. You'll see her again this weekend."

Roland looks over to her, and she nods. "Promise."

" _Okay_ ," Roland sighs. Pulling the painting from his father's hands, he hands it to Regina instead, throwing his arms around her waist. "Bye, Regina. I love you."

She sighs, kneeling to his height to return the hug, smoothing curls from his forehead. "I love you too, Sweetheart."

Their bond has always made him smile, but now it also makes his chest ache.

Regina catches his eye over Roland's shoulder. He mouthes _thank you._

 _Of course_ , she replies in kind, her expression darkening.

In hand with Roland as they walk to the door, Robin wonders what that look had meant.

* * *

 **Robin's Storybrooke, November 2019**

Soft voices filter into Robin's ears. His head throbbing, he leaves his eyes shut as pain floods his back and shoulders, and he tries to piece together how he ended up here.

"He's waking up," someone says.

A cool hand slides from his.

"Robin?"

He knows that voice.

As he forces his eyes half-open, he catches the barest glimpse of glimmering white light flowing toward him before it disappears. For a hazy moment, all he sees is Regina's face. She sits on a chair beside him; he seems to be laying on a sofa. They had traced a suspect to the library, he recalls, memories filtering back, and then there had been a crashing sound, and a cloud of red light…"What happened?" he asks, wincing when he tries to lift his head. Resting it back against the cushion beneath him, he does his best to look around without moving his neck. The room has the faded wallpaper and eclectic furniture of a suite at Granny's. Emma, Snow, David, and Belle stand in a cluster a few yards away.

"You were thrown against a wall. Whoever's been stealing magical artifacts must have magic themselves. " Robin blinks, his confusion fading back into reality at Belle's words. His gaze snags on Regina—her eyes, her jaw, her lips. It's been so long since they were this close. "Right." Looking down, he sees the edge of a white bandage under Regina's jacket.

She follows his gaze. "Some glass from a broken window," she explains, standing. "It's fine."

Snow comes over with a glass of water, offering painkillers in the other hand and helping him sit high enough to take them.

"Will you lie back down," Regina snaps, impatient if not truly angry, scowling at his attempt to sit fully upright. "Even magic won't vanish away a concussion in five minutes."

The slightest of tremors colors her voice, and, when she pushes hair behind her ear, shows in her hands. Perhaps the others don't even see it.

"Hey, at least he didn't puncture a lung again."

" _David_ ," Snow chides.

Robin's lips quirk halfway up at the reminder of the very first time she'd healed him, until he sees the dark expression spreading over Regina's face. The words to ask what is wrong gather in his throat, and for a moment he wonders what has happened to him, that he holds them back.

But every time he pushes at her armor these days, it comes back stronger, harsher. Every step closer a stab at the shield allowing her to survive. How selfish would he be, to try and break it? _Someone will ask_ , he thinks, hopes, _someone will see_. Perhaps one of these others who, unlike him, has not broken her heart.

"Are you all right?" Snow asks, apparently having caught his somber expression.

"Fine." He leans back against the sofa, resting his head. With relief, he finds that the throbbing subsides.

When Regina next turns to his side of the room, he briefly catches her gaze with his. His chest tight, he forces himself to look away.

* * *

 **Robin's Storybrooke, March 2020**

"What are you doing here?" The clatter of raindrops on surrounding trees forces them to half-shout to be heard.

"Roland called. He was worried about you. He said you'd been out here for hours."

Robin looses another arrow, embedding it in the hole-ridden target fifty yards away. "Why is he worrying about me? I'm not the one who—"

"I'm _fine_ , Robin." The drizzling rain is picking up, the ground already muddy beneath his feet.

"You fell thirty feet and broke half your ribs."

She takes a step closer. "And Emma healed me."

Another arrow flies into the target, this time going wide of the center target.

"I was trying something new, where the rift had been. I didn't see that the crevasse in the ground was still there."

Finally, she stands close enough that they can speak at a normal volume, the trees no longer shielding her from the rain. His arms sag. "I know. I'm the one who found you. You know that, right?" He presses on before she can stop him. "The same way I found you when Elsa's ice cut through your shoulder, and the same way _you_ found _me_ when those men who were searching for her stabbed me. I felt it."

Her voice is soft. "I know."

He spins to look at her. "That magic didn't work when we were together, only when we—"

"I _know_."

"So that's it, then. It's been decided." As if they hadn't been apart for almost a year and a half already. But still, he'd hoped, that somehow…but the _magic,_ the stupid, ridiculous, life-saving magic had known they weren't together, and had warned him that she was hurt. When had this become a permanent thing, a we-can't-ever-fix-this thing?

"What's been decided?"

He hates her stare, the wide-eyed, almost tearful gaze buried beneath a face set in its mask.

Normally, or at least normally for these last eighteen months, he'd pull back, ease off, try not to upset her more. But he's out of patience for that today. "Why do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"That _shield_ , that iron face as though nothing in the world is wrong. I can _see_ that's not the case. I know you far too well."

" _Please_ don't…"

"Why, are you afraid of something?" He feels vicious, his pain twisting into arrows, launching at her as surely as the ones protruding from the distant target.

"Robin."

"Why haven't you tried to fix this? Why don't you want us to be happy? Or was it all a lie before—"

"Robin!"

He doesn't mean any of it, doesn't believe it, but it hurts so badly, and he misses her so much. It is such an easy reflex, made easier by the curse, to stab back, to push where he shouldn't.

Tears pool in her eyes, just shy of falling, mingling with the rain running over their skin.

"Why didn't you just say no to me at the beginning?" he whispers, shoulders slumped even as his hands turn white gripping his bow. "Why did you kiss me? Why did you have to…I wasn't _happy,_ before, in the Enchanted Forest. But at least I hadn't known what I was missing."

"Robin of Locksley," her voice is like ice, "don't you _dare_ —" it cracks.

They reach for each other at the same moment, falling into an embrace so tight he can hardly catch his breath.

"I'm sorry," he croaks into her ear as she presses her face into his neck. It's all he's good for now, it seems. Making her cry. "You scared me."

"I always cared about you. That wasn't why—"

His hand slides across her back. "I know that. I know that, I promise."

She sinks into him. Something about this feels more final than arguing, like an ending. He soaks up the memory of this, her body pressed into his, the smell of her rain-damp hair, the rush of her breath over his skin. Knowing this will have to end, and hoping that it doesn't.

He can't do this anymore. Not to himself, and especially not to her.

He clings anyway.

"This is how it has to be," she finally says, voice mostly even. She begins to pull away, sliding her arms from around him, taking a step back. Each lost bit of contact numbs him, and like his arms, overworked from archery, his heart feels too spent to ache as much as he expects it should.

* * *

 **Storybrooke, June 2021**

"Can we see Regina again tomorrow, Papa?"

Robin marks their place in the second _Harry Potter_ book with a finger and turns to his son. "Why?"

"I want to make her some cookies. Since she gave us those pancakes. I know the recipe for cookies all by myself."

His son has never really _stopped_ talking about her, but today he's brought her up more than usual. "We can do that, if you'd like."

"Really?"

Robin ruffles his son's hair, drawing out a giggle. "Really."

"How long have we known her, Papa?"

Robin thinks for a moment. "About six years now."

"It feels like it's been _forever_."

"It does, doesn't it?" In Roland's young memory, it almost has.

Roland snuggles into his bed, and Robin opens the book to resume reading.

"Hey, Papa?"

"Mhm?"

"I miss when we were all together."

Robin sighs, wrapping an arm around his son's shoulders and kissing the side of his head. "So do I."

.

.

.

Robin switches off the lights and sinks onto his bed with a heavy sigh. Whenever he closes his eyes, he sees her face this afternoon. The relief when he'd touched her. Had that rainy day, over a year ago, really been the last time?

Her questions haunt him. Has he truly changed so much, become so unrecognizable to her?

But then, he admits to himself, she might have worried about those things anyway. She has always been so certain of the frailty of her relationships, the ease with which people stand and walk out of her life.

Frowning, he rubs a hand over his face. She'd been so sure, when Marian returned, that he'd hate her, so confident that she would become a monster in his eyes. And he'd fed those fears, using her as a release for his own pain, his hurt, his guilt, his confusion. He'll never forgive himself for the way he spoke to her in those first days, how he avoided admitting to them both that he had fallen in love with her.

He'd been trying to help this time, to do what she'd asked and give her space. Each time he had seen her, staring at him coldly because she would otherwise break, he'd been reminded why he did what he did. Because he'd promised himself he'd do his best never to hurt her.

But in doing what he thought was best, had he failed her again?

 _I didn't want to leave_ , he's ached to tell her every time he's seen her. _I wanted to do what was best for you, to save you from more pain, but I never, ever wanted to._

Does she know that? Had _she_ known that? Had she believed it?

His fingers sliding unconsciously over his tattoo, he pulls back his sleeve to stare at it, murky and ill-defined in the moonlight. The mark had always been so poignant to her, something to seek out or avoid; caress or cover. He's had it for so long that to him, it is merely part of his body. But looking at it now through her eyes, he can understand why he'd always caught her staring at it, why, half asleep with their limbs tangled, he'd often felt her tracing the shape of it with light, tickling fingers.

The touch lingers in his memory as he lies back, trying not to imagine what it would be like, if things were the way Roland had said, when they were all together.

.

.

.

"You _are_ different."

Regina's eyes dance. "And you're _tall_."

" _Mom_ ," Henry whines.

"Your usual?" Granny asks as they take seats at the bar.

"I suppose." Regina frowns, brushing crumbs from the counter and hoping her _usual_ here is tolerable. And caffeinated.

Granny sets down a steaming mug of black coffee, satisfying enough as the smell reaches Regina's nose. But she's relieved that the woman returns a moment later with an understanding nod and two hot chocolates.

Granny narrows her eyes at them. "You don't look right."

Regina looks up sharply, Granny staring down her spectacles.

"I hope it's something going on with that man of yours."

"Granny!"

"What? Any fool could see he's still in love with you. And last time I checked, you weren't the type to fall out of love so easily, what with cursing the entire town and all."

Regina scoffs.

"What you need is one of your boy's operations." She nods to Henry. "Like the old days."

"Old days don't last forever. People move on."

Granny bristles. "Now what would you know about that?" She stalks off.

Regina looks to Henry, her furrowed brow confused.

"She and Ruby had a nasty fight last year," Henry explains. "Something about Ruby's boyfriend."

"What, Whale?"

Henry nods.

"And Ruby thinks it's her grandmother's fault that she and that fool have problems?"

Henry shrugs. "Business has also been bad I guess. They got rid of lots of the part time staff, cut back on hours…"

Leroy sits a few seats over and grumbles, "This place has gone to the dogs if you ask me. No wolf pun intended."

Regina rolls her eyes. "I notice it hasn't stopped you from coming."

The door jingles, and Leroy turns red-faced as the new customers enter. "What're _you_ doing here!" he shouts at four of his brothers. "It's Sunday. I get the diner on Sundays."

Sneezy puffs out his chest. "We'll come here when-when- _achoo!_ -whenever we want."

"Yeah, right."

"Stay our of our way, Leroy."

"You stay out of mine. This is _my_ place—"

"This is my shop," Granny interrupts, looking at Leroy over her glasses. "Leave them alone."

Grumpy scowls, turning away to pointedly ignore the others.

For several minutes, Regina asks Henry about classes and school in detail he hadn't covered on their walk here. But soon the brothers are shouting across the diner again.

Emma and the un-Charmings, Snow and David, Granny and Ruby…what is _with_ this place? It's almost like her curse, but that had been days and days of mind-numbing sameness, and here everything seems to be getting worse.

"What's going on with them?"

Henry shrugs. "They've been doing this for a while."

The shouting picks up again. She turns to the brothers. "Leroy. _Leroy._ "

"What, lady."

"Keep it down, would you?" She turns to the others. "And that goes for you, too."

"We will if he does," Doc argues.

"Yeah, we-we-we…" Dopey elbows Sleepy as he yawns.

Regina throws a glance at Granny, who is wiping tables halfway across the room. The woman shrugs and moves on, ignoring them.

"Oh, for pity's sake," Regina grumbles.

"They're the ones who started it," Leroy argues.

"No we didn't! You're the one who decided you were better than all of us, going around telling all of us how to do things."

"Yeah, we-ah-achoo we got tired of it."

"You started all the arguments."

"You're one to talk—"

"Oh really? And you didn't—"

" _Shut up_."

They turn to look at Regina, stunned. Henry covers a grin beside her. "Now, what were these arguments about?"

They stare at her blankly.

"Well…"

"I was—"

"It was…"

"I…don't _remember_ ," Doc finally says, staring at her with slightly fearful eyes.

"His _name_ is Grumpy. Of course you get into occasional fights. Isn't that his purpose? Now, would you all get over whatever _this_ is so I can get back to my coffee?"

"There is the curse," Henry reminds them. "Maybe you weren't as angry about the whole thing as you think."

The five brothers stare at each other blankly.

"Grumpy, do you wanna have coffee with us?"

"No, I don't."

"Well then—" Sneezy starts. Regina glares at him. Sneezy stands straighter. "We're going to have coffee with you."

They march over to an empty booth, Doc dragging a semi-reluctant Leroy behind him.

Half-smiling at Henry's grin, Regina lifts her hot cocoa for another sip.

A quarter of it sloshes over to the side, the mug clattering as it drops the few inches back to the table.

The dizziness always takes her by surprise, though it's happened nearly every day here. When she opens her eyes, the diner, Henry, and the brothers have faded, as though distant, and she sees instead the blurry shapes of dark rocks, and hears the rush of a river. Out of the corner of one eye, she catches a glimpse of— _herself?_ A woman, in the clothes she wore in the Underworld, standing amidst the rocks…

Regina blinks again, and is back in the diner.

"Ok, what was that?"

Regina frowns at Henry.

"Don't say it's _nothing_ , Mom. I can handle it. And I can tell it's definitely something."

"A dizzy spell of sorts. I saw the Underworld, but as I left it."

"Like, years ago?"

She nods.

"It's happened before, hasn't it?" Henry guesses.

"Yes."

"When?"

"When Emma and Snow were over yesterday. Twice, actually." And the walk with Robin.

"You don't think…"

"What?" she presses.

He pushes back from the counter, gathering his backpack from the ground. "We have to go home, where I left that book about Pandora."

.

.

.

"I've read this a hundred times, but I never understood…" Henry flips through the pages, skimming until he finds the riddle:

 _If cursed with evils from this box_

 _and kept outside by its firm locks,_

 _Pandora's hands you must possess_

 _to free the world from its distress."_

Regina stares. "What? I don't understand."

"I think that's _it_ , Mom. Someone has to be Pandora, and show people why they cared in the first place. They have to be reminded of the good things. The hope at the bottom of the box. _That's_ how it opens."

His meaning takes a moment to sink in. "And you think _I'm_ somehow here to do that?"

"It happened when you made the brothers remember that they care about each other. And when you and Mom and Grandma were working together for the first time in years. That was your spell wasn't it? To try again? You'll break the curse, and then things will be right here again!"

" _Henry_ …" She thinks more about it, embracing Snow, and touching Robin's hand, and breaking up the brothers' fight. Could that be it? "I don't think that's possible. I cast that spell in the Underworld so that we could have another chance at the key, so that we could break the curse _before_ all of this happened. Clearly, that failed." Henry must've been waiting, hoping all of these years, that this wasn't real, that some magic would intercede and make it all a bad dream. What will happen to him when his hopes are disappointed?

"But it explains everything. Your spell, the time travel, your visions of the Underworld. It's your spell, working. Just, not exactly how you imagined."

He's so sure. So _Henry._

He gives her that look, the one he does when he knows she's taken by an idea, no matter how hard she tries to fight it. "Even if that _were_ true, it doesn't answer how I get back."

"Maybe, when you've broken the curse, you will get back. Once the spell wears off."

"Henry, these are great theories, but—"

"It's worth a thought, okay?"

She sighs, wishing she didn't hope so much that he could be right. He stares at her earnestly for several moments, then relents and leads her toward the kitchen.

"Now come on. I've been looking forward to some home-cooked food, and I won't be here for lunch tomorrow."

"You're going to Emma's?" She guesses. That usually involves microwave or takeout fare.

Henry looks suddenly uncomfortable. "Actually, I'm meeting Robin."

Oh.

"I set it up before we knew…"

"It's fine, Henry."

"I know."

She wants to ask more about what it's been like these past few years. More, really, about what _she's_ been like.

Later, she decides. When this isn't all so…new.

.

.

.

"It's been a while."

Robin looks up as David slides into a booth beside him, a half-empty drink in his hands.

He can almost hear Regina's voice, retorting _what a Charming introduction_ , the sharp little games they used to play, without any real malice. A private grin tugs at his lips for half a breath. "I came after her. That was as it should be."

Years ago, Robin might have suspected Snow of sending her husband here to talk to him. But these days such things are unlikely. He almost wishes for that time again, when Snow and David were still hopeful and scheming, still attached at the hip. "But you had become our friend, as well."

Robin looks down, stirring his melting drink.

"She ended it, didn't she? She never really said."

Robin looks up, brow furrowing.

David nods. "Of course she did."

Robin takes a drink. "I dunno. Maybe she was the brave one. It had been bad for so long, and she forced us to admit it." Even as the words leave his mouth, he knows it's something he speaks as though willing himself to believe it.

David tosses back the rest of his drink. "I can see what you mean."

Robin may not have seen them much in the last two years, but he hasn't been blind to the coolness between the Charmings. Perhaps it is its own kind of curse, to be close and yet distant. "I saw Henry today. He thinks this—" Robin gestures vaguely toward town, the fires and time travel and Regina, "—means the curse is breaking, and then everything will just go 'back to normal _'_."

"Wouldn't it be easy if life were like that?" David asks after a moment'a pause.

Robin scoffs. "Very easy."

"If I never said, I am sorry about you and Regina."

"Thank you." Robin thumbs his damp napkin until it begins to tear. "Do you ever wonder if things could've been different? If not having the curse would've changed things?"

"All the time. You don't?"

"It's not that. I just…I've wondered sometimes if we were heading here anyway."

David laughs.

"What?"

"I've known Regina for a very long time. Stepmother, queen, prisoner, enemy, _evil queen_ , mayor, mother, godmother, friend. I'm not sure how anyone could know where her life was heading."

"You have a point there. I'm not convinced that _she_ sees it that way."

"Well, she always has been stubborn."

" _Incredibly_ stubborn," Robin agrees. So certain her life was meant to go in one direction, toward darkness, loneliness, hurt. "Much like your wife." The woman who will never give up on anything or anyone.

"Sometimes I think they can both be too stubborn for their own good."

He'd wondered for weeks after her birthday, the February before last, if she'd meant that moment in the street to be a first step toward reconciliation, if she'd simply been too stubborn to say so out loud, if _he'd_ been too stubborn to understand her. He'd thought, after that day of her fall, that her icy stare had been her way of stubbornly keeping herself from wanting—lord knows he'd sometimes had to do the same himself. Maybe they all had been too stubborn for their own good.

And he cannot help himself from thinking that people that stubborn should be able to put things right.


End file.
